She’d been perfection in holiday guise;
hair like a fir tree, gleaming bauble-eyes.
Her candy-cane teeth were covered with lies.
They were beautiful when she smiled;
the neon snowflakes glittered.

She’d told me how she had wanted to die
gift-wrapped for the coffin. I asked her, “but why?”
The red and green of isolation swallowed her reply.
So the last time that I saw her
she was hanging like mistletoe.

The funeral: I stood beside men with moustaches.
“Sudden onset,” they reasoned from beneath tinsel lashes,
“But happy holidays and all that, and ashes to ashes!”
Their reindeer noses blushed outside,
so they went in, and drank eggnog.