Midwinter Mirror
a poem about what Christmas reveals, not what it should be.
In the weeks before the shortest day
the streets grow tighter, elbows sharper.
Cars honk like wounded animals,
queues coil into resentment,
eyes avoid eyes
lest courtesy be mistaken for weakness.
We are told this is celebration:
buy more, wrap tighter, post brighter.
The screens glow with curated tables,
perfect trees, families who never snap.
We scroll and compare,
measure our worth in receipts.
For some the season is abundance…
tables groaning, lights endless,
gifts arriving like proof of being loved.
They smile in photos, tag gratitude,
never noticing the mirror they hold up
to those standing just outside the frame.
For others it is arithmetic of absence:
counting coins against a child's wishlist,
calculating how much debt is bearable
to keep the lie of "normal" alive.
The heating bill versus the toy,
the empty chair versus the empty promise.
Loneliness is not absence of people…
it is presence everywhere else.
Yet beneath the tinny carols and flashing sales
the old midwinter pulse still beats:
the need to gather against the dark,
to share what little we have,
to say without words:
you are seen, you matter,
even if only for this brief, strained night.
No savior arrives to fix it.
No virgin birth rewrites the ledger.
Only us - flawed, frayed, furious, fragile…
holding up the mirror to our own hands,
and deciding, sometimes,
to reach across the glass.
It isn't pretty.
It isn't peaceful.
But it is honest.
And in that honesty
perhaps the real warmth begins.
- UpsilonA