So this is Christmas...

When I wake up, the only wreath in the house is one of cigarette and marijuana smoke that lazily curls around the naked bulb in the ceiling of our studio apartment. I climb out of the top bunk of the bed I share with my younger brother. It's hard to escape the view of anyone in a space that small. My brother and my father are sitting on the floor. My brother talks animatedly of nothing, spewing out words that fill the air as surely as my father's smoke. My father sits in a full lotus, wearing a pink ruffled Read more