.: the fire dies down, the tree is unplugged, the quietude of the woods settles in. I can still hear a faint metallic chiming, a soft fading ring of ghostly bells and icicles. Another Christmas tapers off to a fine point, fading and receding and minimizing into a single glowing dot, a single-pixel afterimage; in like a storming elf, out like a trail of cookie crumbs.

Something about the moon seems to tell me that there is more to this.

But it is a small and vague notion; the rest of me is content. Someday I will pierce the layers, will peel back the onionskin and get to the core, and if that means being out there, so be it. But for tonight, with my family all asleep in their rooms of wooden beams and yellow lamps and plaid flannel and full bellies, I sit back and open my body right up, spread the angel wings that are my lungs and breathe in these last moments, sacred and profane.

A merry christmas to you all. Good night.