Envisioning

Of you and I in your kitchen, and we'd be talking about Christmas, and I'd leave you a present, perfectly selected, something of me and something of you.

I don't know if you do Christmas. I don't like to think of you alone at it even if you don't. You've got family so maybe you go to them, or they come to you or you go to someone particularly special.

I know the perfect thing to get you, or what I would like to be a perfect thing. You like facts that support you, a cosy web of facts to lie queen in. But I would like to buy you fiction, of persecuted peoples; maybe a myths book, a book of collected tales, or else a modern dystopia that I'm so keen on, The Handmaid's Tale, or the Penelopiad (because it might be your namesake) or 1984, or a book of poems that I like. Or even one of my own if I was brave enough, though I never would be and that would be too effusive. Maybe Shakespeare's Othello. Maybe William Blake. Second hand ideally, a copy with history of its own. I'd like to make you a piece of jewellery, a hunk of natural stone threaded onto a thick material to catch the light like you do. I read somewhere jewellery is meant to denote ownership, by the giver, to the gifted. I don't mean that, I just mean... I would like all of these presents but would you?

I'd wrap it just so and leave it with a tag on a worktop in the kitchen where you would find it. That's what would please me. I might not write that it was from me. I might just write, "To....., I thought you would like this because I do. Happy Christmas. Love." Happy Christmas, love from me, and happy christmas my love, both equally meant. No pressure on you to return the favour, to react in a certain way because I'd be gone by the time you found it, no pressure on me to watch you or to make it a gift you couldn't fail to adore, mismeant. You could be pleased or unhappy as the feeling caught you, and there's noone to blame or to thank afterwards. Just the present for you to enjoy, discard, donate, whatever.

I'd hope it would make you glad that someone had thought of you. It would be lovely if you thought it was me, and that made you happy. I'd be happy if you got it and thought it was someone you loved, if it wasn't me, because that would make your heart soar and you deserve that my darling.