July 3, 2009

I am done buying gifts
for the ragamuffin children

who sport my name and hold
a thimble full of my blood.

I have won their affections
with reptiles and ribbons,

and they have thanked me as
their embarrassed mother instructed.

And the machine look in their eyes
as they threw obligatory arms about my neck

is perhaps similar to the look in mine as
they tore through the thin green paper.

Emptiness given, emptiness received.
The ornaments, older than I remember.