Healing Machine for Tyler
For the shame of wanting more from life than you've been told you deserve
You are in the Christmas section of Hobby Lobby. You walk through the aisle of 8-foot Yuletide pines already strung with lights and powdered with fake snow. You gawk at the ornaments, running your fingers over the fine red glass, the gold sparkles, the pine cones with googly eyes. You shake the snow globes, clack the nutcrackers, run your thumbs over the bottle brush trees. Strings of colored lights and white lights and mini lights shine in your eyes. You want it all. You feel the old pain in your chest, the pain that you can only pick one thing. The part of you that wants the blue nutcracker lashes out at the part that wants the blown glass ornament of a silver pig. You take so long deciding what you want that the lights go down in the store. You realize the place is empty. You hear the ring of sleigh bells and the whistle of a midwinter storm. In the snow globe aisle, you find the twin bed from your childhood spread with a red and green quilt. You climb into the bed, pulling the quilt up to your chin. A great sense of peace comes over you. Everything here is yours now - was yours all along.