My name is Ruth Collins and I’m 33 years old. I practice law for a living, which means the people who come to me expect clean lines, tidy arguments, and endings that look like closure. Real life never bothers with that. It frays and snags in the places you don’t look. Sometimes it unravels under twinkle lights.
Christmas at my brother’s house is a performance he puts on for the neighborhood. Icicles along the porch gables. A plastic reindeer family grazing on the lawn. The kind of inflatable Santa that wheezes in and out like it’s struggling to breathe. Inside, every surface is dressed. Garlands looped around the stair rail like velvet ropes at a nightclub. Candles that smell like the word holiday more than anything you could name. A table so crowded with plates and ribbons and chargers that you have to negotiate with your elbows to set down a glass.
