Debtors' prison caught on fire

She had her back to me at the kitchen counter on purpose, which I could tell by the way her neck and back were arranged that this could go on and on. Her teeth were clenched or something and she grabbed the spatula and pulled it around the inside of the bowl with a violence that continued to make her point, that the cookies were enough of a Christmas gift and that was it.

I went outside and thought about smoking the joint in my front pocket that she didn’t know about, maybe let her have something worth really yelling for. There are things that are intractable anyway, and I didn’t much give a damn what she wanted our new holiday tradition to be when it drew so much attention to the fact that hey we’re Dickensian poor isn’t that adorable. If that’s pride then what.

My mind went around a million words while I stood there on the porch not smoking that joint and the clouds hanging over the city couldn’t figure between rain or sleet. I thought if I could get her to see, but the problem was I’d go back inside and say ten of those words, sputter and look away. So I stayed, and I thought about the plastic tree inside, cheaply made and shorter than I was but laden heavy with lights and plain ball ornaments and a few other ones, Santa playing tennis and Chewbacca and a dozen others, made special because they were given between us, how even the corniest of things could be the embodiment of love, so too with the cookies, and I went inside and I picked up that tree and threw it to the floor on my way into the bedroom.