My Cardboard Balcony

It's not easy to talk about loneliness without sounding indulgent or self-pitying. So as this year ends, I'll keep my mouth shut. I'll lie on the couch and stare at the ceiling, while the Christmas lights we haven't bothered to take down yet flicker around me. I'll roll a pair of dice over and over in my left hands, so that the rattling ultimately sounds like personalized percussion. I didn't expect the year to peter off like this. Feels...anticlimactic somehow. Especially now that I sit in this tiny house alone, with the fire fading in the hearth, and the snow outside more like slush than anything. Inside, the dishes have piled off. I can still smell the marinara sauce and turkey I cooked up last night. The angel hair sat uncomfortably in my stomach - perhaps real angel hair would do the same thing. Why I'd eat real angel hair, I dunno. Why I think angels may be real, I don't know, either. I should do the dishes. But I'm so tired. It's not...

I called the police after hearing glass break at my neighbor's house. Instead of a smashed window, however, it was an empty wine bottle that had made the sound, and by the time the officers arrived, Mr. Pollack was kneeling against the wall, forehead pressed against the plaster, a precise stream of red flowing from the exposed back of his head. Mrs. Pollack was nowhere to be found.

Well. Here we are. My last introspection of 2018. Christmas was nice this year. To be fair, it's normally nice for me, save for the times in which I've been ill. But I especially liked how my in-laws came up for the holiday, so that they got to celebrate it with me, my wife, and my family. I loved the presents I received, the traditions we kept, and the company. The quieter moments were honestly my favorite. Having the relatives over was lovely, and the food was fantastic. But it was the walk we took around my hometown, the Scrabble game with my mother-in-law, the chat with my wife and my mom after everyone had gone back home or to their hotels or just off to bed - those small, intimate moments meant the world to me. It made me feel settled, at ease, for the first time in a long time. Of course, now I'm nearly done with my first out of two weeks of break, and I've honestly haven't done much. That's not a bad thing, obviously, though I do poke fun at myself...

Older, But Not Wiser by Belinda Roddie This year has felt like a century. I'm so tired.

Zebediah's retribution was swift, and yet, it was completely inefficient. For the rebellion continued, and the blades were sharpened by sunrise, and the entire swarm of the disenchanted soon took over the palace of golden bricks. The emperor, at this point, was pointless. He sat on his throne and watched as the windows of his fortress were shadowed, accepting the fact that the edifice would ultimately become his tomb.

I Made A Star by Belinda Roddie I made a star of clay on Christmas night, worth more to me than any pound of gold, or silver, or any sweet beauty bright. I offered it to my grandfather old, who sat in his rocking chair by the frost that collected on the window. He said, "Well, what a star that the sweet sky has lost! Though it be clay, this star is far from dead, for it still shines despite its earthen tones and its brown shades. I'll keep it forever, arranging it with other precious stones." The years I spent with him became a blur, but I remembered the dirt on my hands after molding the cosmos from hot sands.

Morris was writing a new musical about some sort of orphan - where have I heard that before?  fending for herself in a mystical land of dungeons and dragons - now where have I heard that  before? - before becoming queen. He claimed it was going to be the most creative and original musical of our time. I also know he said that after having imbibed seven strawberry daiquiris, so I couldn't give him a huge  amount of credit.