the giving and the getting

I've burned myself down to the very end of my consumer string; what once was long and seemingly endless has ended. What's worth wracking my brain over, anyway. Materials I need to fill up my emptiness or accessorize my esteem when all I want is to bottle up time in a glass room and clutch the words of the book that has longed for me to read her, long years waiting, and to memorize her love story. If only I could become a dear friend to what stands unused and already written. If the book was to sneak away in the middle of the night, I would lament only that I did not read her in time. That I always knew that the night would come.  

I could ask my family and friends to rewrap my collections and regift them to the people who will repurpose them beyond their sedentary station in my life - wool mittens for frostbitten hands and artwork for blank walls and perfume for a small, leathery woman who hasn't smelled something so sweet since her mother went away.  Why is it so shameful to admit that I want nothing sewn in threads or wrapped in paper; to say that I hope my kids don't confuse wanting things for needing love. To admit that all I want are the things I need: love, grace, mercy, wisdom - like songs, packaged in the air and the clouds and the day's quiet light. I wish my best friend could tie herself to the sun, or that family could traipse across my falling sky or across the sky of my children - that they could look up and see how many little clouds are trying to reach them. I wish I could catch the autumn leaves before they hide beneath winter's jacket, form them into page one by one, so that they may know - every living thing matters, and every word breathes life if it is true. I wish that I could wrap my day's short sorrow in a crimson red blanket to remember how warmed I am by privilege and how heavy my heart is when I forget it.

The giving and the getting game - I get it. But all I want for Christmas is to give what I have away. It is, anyways, the greatest and only portion I can offer.

"The greatest gift is a portion of thyself." Ralph Waldo Emerson
"For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." Matthew 6:21