As a small child, 

I spent cold winter days and long nights alone in the comfort of my own thoughts, 

lying on the floors of my childhood home. I would listen to a battery-pack Santa 

say ho-ho-ho repeatedly, 

before it began to wizen down and die. On the streets where tinsel hung on the lampposts, I would hear the other children go sledging, sing jingle bells, see Santa; all of them but I. 

After a while, I would forget who I was, spraying snow out of a can 

onto the fake plastic tree 

that one of my neighbours gave to me. All of the children would be 

dreaming of Santa, 

and by the next morning 

would swear that they had heard him, 

seen him climbing down the chimberley, drinking the milk, eating the pie. 

And all the while I sit schtum, 

knowing that Santa doesn’t exist, 

knowing most things our mam and dad tell us as littlies are lies. 

I spray the spray-on-snow, 

onto my eczema-inflicted armskin, 

until there is no skin, just spray. 

I wish to be a Christmas tree, 

I think they’d have fun. 

They just breeze around in woodland, 

they don’t speak to anyone.

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