Twelfth Night

Due to some long-forgotten Godly logic,

or perhaps the average viability of a tree corpse,

or really it's just how it's always been done,

today it must come down.

You are ready,

although at first there will be resistance.

It is a shimmering, glorious monument after all.

A folly to light in the dark.

Memory. Unconditional love. Childhood.

Fireplaces and contentment.

You spent so long, 

after all,

choosing it in its own large and not symmetrical specialness.

Hauling it up the narrow, twisty stairs to your top-floor apartment.

Enduring the scratches, sharp tones and absurdity.

Because this is how you know to make a third-floor apartment a home.

Like a riddle, 

it was trimmed and only grew larger still and more bountiful.

This is what it truly means to be dripping in jewels.

Heirlooms and gifts.

Thrift store treasures and homemade beauties.

Bedecked in glistening glass and almost-true stories.

It is the first and last ritual you know.

And so --

though you are ready,

you are,

you remind yourself,

grateful to rediscover the space that was always there,

the new perspective on your living room

that fresh start feeling can't come soon enough,

truly --

at first there will be resistance.

It is uncomfortable to shed magic, even faded and desiccated.

It is hard work to haul a seven-foot ritual down from a third-floor apartment.

Although you are ready.

And rest assured,

you could not stop it now, even if you weren't ready.

You could lie back,

relax,

watch the dead tree continue to die. 

Time is taking care of it.

You don't have to lift a finger.

Time is already rowing you across that river, baby.

But you are ready.