Poetry by Nathalia Jones

      Ted Thompson CC




Our Traditions Need a Home

I wasn’t prepared for Christmas carols last night; they opened a door – blue and heavy. A damp December breeze lapped at the butter paper mum was fitting into cake pans. The shepherds ‘pasture’ – of softly rippling Raggi grass carpeted an old work table; the dollhouse awaiting its infant king; painstakingly wrought for his annual cameo along with the bent heads of staffs and sceptres. We stood small, insignificant and wondrous, not small enough to hunker down and join the cows in the manger. 

The air was thick with burnt sugar and chaos; generations presiding over meticulously dispersed instructions for Christmas. Papa had the nutcracker ready for daddy’s kulkuls; Aunty Yvonne’s won the children over with their glazed icing. The ducks huddled together, suspiciously eying all the commotion. We begged daddy to spare Drake or face mutiny. We drew a line and it was a thing of feathers. 

Turpentine and limestone clipped at my heels, carols a left jab to the ear, my own fingerprint is a distinct echo to the treacle smudged, dog-eared heirloom. We carry the hope that it leaves our metronome existence more besmirched that its battered pages. 

But the joys are frugal; we’ve scavenged a brimstone grind. 

Each year we rehearse this holiday trope on quicksand. 

How easy it was to get wrapped up in the illusion; view the glass as half-full when you’re already two bottles and a drunken cake into the act; play up hearth’s desires fuelled by feint and a flaring light show.

But I’m all played out. There will be no boozy fruit to buoy spirits or gingerbread men or tree weighed down with hope and a thousand LED lights. 

So, while you thought it was time to crank up the volume on Christmas, my heart was bursting through floodgates; the dam broke mid octave Kelly Clarkson’s ‘Underneath The Tree’. It was a cruel reminder that our traditions are yet to find a home; when tomorrow comes they will be lamentably boxed up; gilded castaways that once lit up these halls with marshmallow smiles; made sinners out of saints; switched on Christmas in every corner and dappled cosy winter mornings in silver sparkle.
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The storm made landfall square in the chest; I mouthed a silent ‘thank you’ when you cut to something appropriately mundane.

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Nathalia Jones is an aspiring writer of mostly confessional poetry and prose. Her writing explores conflict in relationships and draws from personal experience. She has been featured in the Summer Anthology of Querencia Press and the Autumn Issue of Metachrosis Lit Mag, both published in 2023.