Sincerely, Jennifer x

I just wanted to host it at my house.
I always do, because my house is big,
and my oven feels even bigger.
When I clean it, it’s like cave diving,
so I was confident that I could cook a goose,
turkey or a whole hen house of chickens,
but everyone else had a Dickens of an idea and decided that we should change our plans.
The ghosts behind me growled,
half in disapproval, on my behalf,
and half in transparent excitement at how much free time I’d suddenly have.

Free time is free fall.
Free time is fraught with danger.
Do you want me to think?
Do you really want me to think?
Alone?
Unsupervised?
After this “hard year”?
REALLY?

My three ghosts gathered,
gasping at the way I wept when the door was closed,
because, after all, it was only one day,
and I didn’t even like cooking,
or the days and days of cleaning up that seemed to come with twelve hours of festive fun.

“Why does she cry?” The chorus came,
confused, concerned spirits that did not know me at all,
and I began to wonder if anybody did,
because they’d all remarked at my show of strength,
without seeming to realise that I had spent seven months staring down into the soil of the cemetery.

Was I waiting for something?
Watching over old bones that owed me closure?
Waiting to make sure death didn’t get tired of him and send him back?
Nobody knew,
because nobody knew I had been there since the first buds of Spring,
counting days of Summer, like sheep,
begging for the sweet relief of a manic, mountainous list of tasks,
only for them to never come.

… but they must know.
Surely, they must.
They took the fairy lights, playlist curation and dreaded stuffing preparation,
because it’s too much,
too poor for my blood,
too close to hard work when I should be resting,
but I’m so restless.
Can’t they see that I am seconds away from snapping?
The dam is breaking and my eyes are drowning.
I have no mouth and I just scream.

I just wanted to host it at my house.

You might have found a bigger house on AirBnB,
but when did we become a family that supports short term let landlords?

You might have found a bigger oven,
but mine is familiar, and you can’t pay for that level of familiarity,
between ovens and families.
(Do not Google that. I definitely did not make that up.)

You might think it’s too much,
but I’m telling you, as plainly as I can,
(and by that, I mean very vaguely in a poem I will refuse to show you),
that being alone with nothing to do is too much,
because that is when my ghosts gather.

My ghosts are so bored of the spectacle of me sobbing.
They are circling,
suddenly hungry for the madness I have been running from,
sprinkling soil from the cemetery onto my sleeping head,
leaving memories around the house like discarded tea towels.