There's No One Elf Like You

Christmas was a time of intimacy.

I brought a tiny tree and hung stockings.
We filled them with sweets and mini bottles of alcohol.
We watched Christmas cartoons and stole kisses under the imaginary mistletoe as we cooked together.
The dinner we prepared would have made any dinner guest proud.

It was a snuggly time of year.
He even took pictures with me.
And he hated taking pictures.

One night, not even influenced by a drop of wine, he opened the iron gates guarding his heart.
Kissing me, he stopped and looked into my eyes.
"I love you. You're the most beautiful woman in the world."

I thought I'd died and gone to heaven.
Three days later he said he needed some time apart.
And that was the beginning of the iron gates locking for good.

Days crept by our premature ending and he was looking for something in his desk.
And that's when I caught a glimpse of it.
Safely tucked away in a drawer only he opens was the miniature snow globe I'd put in his stocking.
A little elf dancing in the snow, with the caption reading, "There's no one elf like you."

He kept it.
The minimalist emotionless purger held onto the silly little snow globe I'd given him at Christmas.
I wanted to point it out.
I wanted to tease him and pretend he had to give it back.
But I knew that'd ruin it somehow.

I felt like I'd caught the high school quarterback reading Shakespeare sonnets in the parking lot.
No one knew how much it made him smile to remember how happy we'd been under those twinkle lights.

Or to remember I saw him that way.
Him and only he.

But my heart housed its own secret.

That little snow globe had once belonged to another lost love.

I'd bought it years ago for Mr. Volcano, the year my love shined under other twinkle lights.
But he hadn't wanted to keep anything from me.
There was nothing about me he'd wanted.

So with crumpled dreams and lying love letters, it went in a box, unseen, and forgotten.
Three moves later and a season or six, I stumbled across the tiny treasure.
I thought my new love might find it amusing.

Though knowing him, I reasoned, he'll think nothing of it and mumble his usual, snide response to everything.
"It's adorable."

And yet with all of the things I'd packed up one calm night in acceptance, and all the unwanted clutter he'd repeatedly thrown out and the handful of things he actually held onto, that little elf sits still in his desk.
A symbol of all that once was.
All he let himself feel, before he locked it away, shoved in the corner of a drawer no one sees.