I don't know how

I don't know how to write this so it sounds like a song. I don't know how to make these words into a poem. I don't know how it can be anything other than what it is: a self-pitying whine, a weepy call for sympathy.

All about me during my walk today I could see families readying their homes for Christmas. Families. Fathers stomping about on rooftops, sons untangling cords, and mothers rearranging boxes in the garage, searching for wreaths or ornaments. On Facebook and in the blogosphere people have posted pictures showing the freshly cut trees they chose, about to take home, about to decorate. I have a chicken roasting in the oven and the scent of its crisping herbed skin hugs the air inside my house.

When my children were wee, it was I who would help with the lights. We had the most obnoxious, the most brightly lit house in the neighborhood. Most people exclaimed over the palm tree, striped like a candy cane with bands of red twinkle lights, and bands of clear twinkle lights. Ostentatious, cheery, and something that gave us joy. As the kids grew older, we conscripted them, and one day it was our son who climbed the extension ladder handing up the strand to his father, rather than me. The Girl and I would be planning the way we would decorate the tree. And there would be a chicken in the oven, the scent of its cooking sending fingers into each room.

I am happier now; there is peace in my house, although it is not lit up like Santa's Village, nor is there a tree. I would rather have the peace, but oh!

I do miss those days.

I don't know how to stop the melancholy.