I lost the romance of this place
and woke up old. One darling
fantasy shattered over the next,
folding over a fist drenched
in my hip. The Christmas trees
are bound and stacked up
outside, the air can’t decide
what to make of itself, and we
are about to throw a president
out. You are not your mother,
and each of your dead lives on
in you and smells like the moon.
Large and mosquito-like,
my prose clatters off
my fingers. I woke up old
and into happy uncertainty,
the vitamins I feed to the streets,
the real relations within a bead.
Oh pouring cylinder, stark
uncertainty, racket of leaves
helicoptering to their death —
my love is coming out
over and over again.
Here it is, what
I always wanted. The air
spills ash; I suppose
it is light.

Maggie Nelson, “Eighteen Days Until Christmas”

Saturday, December 7
43 degrees

Some people want trees that look like trees they’ve had in the past. They hold up their phones to my face and say, “Got any like this?” And if I do, they’re grateful and kind.

Other people buy trees with bald spots or crooked tops because they feel bad for ugly trees.

Some people lose their minds for trees with lots of cones, or skinny trees, or trees that look “lime green.”

One of the guys told me that a few years ago, a couple picked out a tree with a bird’s nest in it and the nest flew off in the delivery truck. They sent a long, agonized complaint to the nursery’s email address, explaining that they’d suffered a miscarriage earlier in the year. When they saw the nest in that tree, they knew the coming year would be better. And now, they said, we had ruined their Christmas.

Jake Maynard, “Christmas Tree Diary“