Thanks, or not

I have a family, a small one: brother, my adult children and their significant others. There's my–I guess I have to use the modifier to be entirely honest–former in-laws. I am assured, via the grapevine, that they do not count as family according to my former husband, as we are not blood relatives, and that I therefore have no right to consider them such.

My memory of Thanksgiving since he left was that I claimed the holiday. But looking through old calendars I discover that I didn't even claim the family–I just conceded.

This is what happened to Thanksgiving. The first Thanksgiving without him, and the second, I went to a friend's. The third, my daughter claimed, but he wouldn't come because I was there. The fourth, he sent me an email claiming Thanksgiving forever, and "giving" me Christmas. I told him to fuck right off, and held Thanksgiving as a christening for my new house. It was cramped and awkward and the food wasn't very good. Last year, the fifth, I went to the friend's again.

This year I turned down what felt like pity invitations from the friends. I bought some lamb chops and will make a non-traditional meal, for myself, by myself.

It is like a physical pain, spending Thanksgiving, my favorite holiday, alone. But it's too painful to do to a friend, knowing that my family goes on without me. It's like being dead, a ghost. And too painful to go to family Thanksgiving as well, knowing that if he and his new family are not there, it's because I am.

Banquo’s chair

There were twin bright blue crushed velvet armchairs
With curved backs and deep arms

You could curl right up in one of them, like a cat,
or push them together to make a fort.

I must have been very young
because i can feel the top of my head
and the soles of my feet
barely brushing the backs of the chairs
as i stretched out
with a book
or for a nap

or just to hide.

If I close my eyes I can see Olga sitting in it
Incorporeal and as young as she would have been
When that little girl used them for a bed.

After Olga died,
Mary and Wei-sun bought them
for twenty-five dollars each
and reupholstered them
in a hard dusty rose.

For 40 years I sat in them
at family dinners
Easter Thanksgiving Christmas

Until yesterday.
When one of the set came back.
To sit in my living room,
like Banquo returning to the scene of the crime.

Metaphor

I have an imaginary friend. No one can see them except me, and I can't really see them. They follow me around, just over my right shoulder; if I could turn fast enough I might catch a glimpse, if I wanted to.

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I don't look into mirrors at night, because I'm afraid of who will be looking back.

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Like a Klingon, I have an entire alternate vascular system, but instead of being filled with blood, it's filled with depression. It flows out of my heart and into my brain and all the way to the tips of my fingers and toes. Like my regular vascular system, most of the time I'm not really aware of it, but every now and then I bump it and a bruise forms, or it bleeds into my brain.