Because there is too much to think about, I wonder about the tinsel instead. The tinsel and the small Christmas tree that sits on the the desk and the Merry Christmas banner, gold-fringed, red print, hung from pole to wall.
There are no stockings and there is no smiling Santa Claus.
I do not like the Christmas cards patched on the window with sticky tape. They are hung, some square and some on the diagonal and none of them in lines. They fall open in untidy ways, and you can’t decipher the names. The sticky tape is the thick and yellow type which marks. The ends look ragged, and I think it was bitten instead of dispensed.
The trees outside are white cedars, rich with green. Do white cedar trees get bees?
I wonder about the woman who gets the tinsel out. Is it that woman on the phone or the one behind the desk? Is it the same woman who – back from holidays and her kids at her mum’s – will take it down? Is that how tinsel works? I wonder: where do they keep the box?
*guilty freeze with end of stickytape roll in mouth*