A Pen-To-Paper Creation.

Birthdays make poor holidays.

The advent of our yearly survival of this Earth is a back-handed custom; the receiving of gifts, a trade-off. Something to distract our attention away from the untimely arrival of tell-tale indentations, and perhaps more importantly, lingering thoughts of mortality that encompass the very essence of morbidity.

We are nothing if not superlatively shallow.

The gifts reflect this. Maleup, moisturiser, perfume, clothing - most presents are of an indubitably intimate nature. Such items serve a distinct purpose, this purpose being to subtly notify the recipient that certain improvements are called for. 'You stink', perhaps, or 'You are long past the stage of professing to disguise that as a frown line'. To top it all off, a crowd of smug onlookers who are able to avoid thoughts of their own longevity bellow loudly, the lyrical atrocity that is the birthday anthem, before introducing grotesque cakes of assorted colour and taste that, while providing neither joy nor happiness, do enure that each fresh years spent within the confines of this earth will begin with an ass wice the size as it was the year before.

Heinous customs.

Christmas, however, is different. There are trees sprouting in almost every home, each indescribably beautiful, and each casting a cheerful shade over mountains of gift-wrapped goodwill and generosity.

Carols are sung. They are unselfish, and do not bear the name of any particular beneficiary. The joy is meant for all, distributed by all.

It makes us eager to reach each year's end. I feel that this is important...it breaks up the mediocrity of simply surviving. It provides an incline in the paths we are bound to - a rise that is approached by many, and overcome by many. Braving this festivity alone is needless..unthinkable.

Perhaps this is what I love most about Christmas. The unity. The feel of footsteps upon the same wet, wooden boards as those that my own feet grip warily.

A birthday serves only to scrutinize and objectify, in one way or another. To differentiate between each inhabitant of this mysterious planet.

Christmas seems as good an excuse as any to force we nomads of existence into good company.

No.

It is better. The best excuse.

Wishes.

I will use it on you.
My 18 candles will extinguish with one simple thought. You, etched into my mind.

I use my wish chips on you too. And my fallen eyelashes. And captured santa clauses.

Because without you, my next birthday won't matter at all.

'Whoosh!'

"TAKE THIS, AND THIS, AND THIS TOO! AND DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT BRINGING HER - THAT, THAT TROLLOP AROUND HERE!"

They've been at it for hours now. My parents, I mean. It began with a barrage of hisses and whispers in the carpeted hall beneath my bedroom. Some bullshit about wanting to protect me, I can only assume, though really they have only succeeded in insulting my intelligence. I'm not a fucking retard.

Anyway. The hushed accusations and curtailed responses quickly gave way to well-aimed snipes and sonophonic self-indignance. They must have known enough to realise I could hear - hell, Van Gough could have heard, and he's dead and missing an ear - but this particuar concern diliquesced with the first eager fist-fulls of mud.

I like to think of it as having come out of storage. It's strange to picture. A lurid orange Kennard's garage in some way-off, gentrified industrial zone, still seedy as a grain silon. The flourescent lighting would be dull, and would flicker like the tasteless pink neons decorating cheap motels on barren highways. The aluminium security door would be corrogated, and serve as canvas to budding graffiti artists sporting grubby cans of cheap, red spraypaint. And here among the ramshackle ruins of disused possessions would sit the barrels.

Rough, copper-rimmed barrels filled to the brim with viscid black mud. Each barrel would be clearly tagged: 'The Vanauatu Disagreement'. 'Petition Against A Vasectomy'. 'The Week You Made Me Spend With Your Mother'. 'Comments Made About My Weight'. Some flaunt spatterings and disjointed handprints from previous fits of slinging, and though much of the mud has crusted with age, both parties can account for every barrel.

"IF YOU THROW ONE MORE SHIRT OUT OF THAT WINDOW, I SWEAR CAROL, YOU'LL REGRET IT!!! EVER STOPPED TO CONSIDER HOW MUCH OF THIS IS ACTUALLY YOUR FAULT?"

"KEEP QUIET!! JAMES WILL HEAR!"

Ah. I was wondering when I would make a reappearance in the squabble. Typically, as a detour from the main issue. The screaming match that can account for the Mexican Wave of raising shutters along our street has now turned to the subject of myself. A new barrel of mud - only to me, they hit like clods with heavy rocks at the centre, leaving sprawling purple bruises in their wake. I suddenly don't want to listen anymore.

I turn to pluck a tissue from the table beside my bed. I like the noise it makes as it glides between the plastic. 'Whoosh!' The fiasco on the lawn is muffled.

I take another. 'Whoosh!'

'Whoosh!'
'Whoosh!'
'Whoosh!'
'Whoosh!'
'Whoosh!'

I begin to imitate the sound as I pull each translucent square from it's flimsy house of cardboard.

'Whoosh!'
'Whoosh!'
'Whoosh!'
'Whoosh!'
'Whoosh!'

Soon, too soon, the patterned box is empty, my room strewn with discarded sheets of disposable erasers for overwrought emotions. I am left to find another means of muting the argument.

Tissues are so simple. The 'Whoosh!' is simple too. It's like a sniff. We hear it, we know someone is snivelling. They are the surest and most honest way to signify melancholy to the world as it lies in wait, doglike, for it's ears to be pricked. An easily discerned means to an end...something to demonstrate unhappiness, but something to quench it too...to force back the tears.

Or perhaps they really an invitation to them?

If only they would sit down...each either side of a box of tissues. If they had told one another how unhappy they had been, maybe none of this would ever even have happened to begin with.

Why couldn't they have been more like the tissues?

Sounds like

Her fingers moved restlessly in the comfortable darkness beneath the dining table. Twirling the dying tissue between her fingers.
Twisting and straining the soft white security blanket of sorts.

The voices of the others bounce off the honey coloured walls. 'Charming' her mother had called the room. Words meant nothing in the world of her mother though. The expression draped across her face had said what she really thought.
Her father was less demanding. colours and fabrics meant nothing to him. All he saw was her ragged, short hair cut and the t-shirt-less torso of Will. Will the vagrant-who-stole-his-only-daughter-and-turned-her-into-a-gyspy. Will the waste-of-space-boyfriend-who-would-leave-her-pregnant-and-poor. Her parents carried label makers like loaded pistols, and they were all too ready to use them on her and her so-called life.

And so she sat, forgetting to breathe for minutes at a time and giving herself a headache. Her parents were giving her a headache. Her parents and their labels and their savage eyes.

Will kept talking, ignoring what was beneath the surface, or maybe he only saw his own refelction? She was grateful for him, he carried only a guitar and a head full of honesty, but still she kept the tissue moving knowing she was shredding it to pieces and littering the floor with the artificial snow of her anxiety.

3 courses. Tea? Coffee? Shall I get your coat mum? Thanks for coming dad! She kept her own smile plastered on running her eyes over Will for reassurance, to make sure he was still there, still staying.

Standing on the front stoop counting down the seconds til she could shut the door and shut them out her mother stopped in the semi darkness and turned around "Oh and Hannah, deeeear, there's a mess of paper under one of the chairs, cleanliness is next to godliness you know. I would expect better from my daughter."