Nuclear Winter: Holiday Dinner Reimagined
We sat in the fallout
of last year’s gift exchange—
smashed angel centerpiece
taped back together
as good as a rogue bomb
if someone mentioned it.
Our voices dragged
like anchors through an ocean—
low, cold, summoning something
older than Kris Kringle.
I strained to recall
a time when it wasn’t like this.
The kitchen table—
a battleship, whipped tension
and potatoes. Dad’s knife slipped
once, then twice. Mammaw clutched
her rosary, counting sins like beads
of gravy on the drop-cloth. The whiskey
isn’t worth your soul, she whispered.
Our air was burned sugar—
a water pie, depression-era relic
left too long in the oven.
As they say, it’s the ingredients you have
that bake the cake.
Mom whispered, Let’s just get through it.
The corners of her mouth disappeared—
I knew better.
When my sister reached for a biscuit,
I grabbed her wrist—too hard.
Mine, I hissed. The room turned
quiet, the kind of silence snow wears
before an avalanche.
By sunset,
half of us were crying—
over the ruined pie,
or the family tree
we couldn’t stop cutting down.
When I reimagine it—
and I always do—
I don’t erase or the snowfall
or the tension.
Instead, I break the bread
without a flinch,
leave my sister’s wrist unmarked.
Dad’s carving hand steadies,
and in my version,
we get grandma drunk—
the old broad needed to lighten up.
The angel still shatters—
but this time we laugh,
our elbows knocking it over
reaching for seconds.
In the end, we huddle closer,
ash still falling, we celebrate
cold on the other side of the door.
Our hands stay sticky, glue healing
the angel’s cracked wings,
sugar crystallizing our fingerprints—
we press lightly, only to test for doneness,
we are patient,
we watch as snow smothers our wreckage—
call it DNA, an elegy.
Copyright ©
Jaymee Thomas
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