The Twelfth Month

The box doesn't have an opinion about Christmas. It has dimensions, a weight limit, and forty-seven branch sleeves arranged by size — and it has been faithfully accurate about all three for somewhere around thirty years. It lives in the attic with the insulation rolls and the broken lamp nobody has thrown out, and eleven months of the year it sits exactly where you left it, which is to say wherever you set it down in January when your back hurt and you still had wrapping paper to deal with.

The one month it gets opened, the whole house shifts. Not metaphorically — the furniture actually moves, or at least a corner of it does. The box watches from wherever it was set, beside the paint-stained shelves or behind the door, and notices that the lights are tangled again even though you were sure you'd fixed that. It isn't surprised. The box has been around.

Episode 4 of Letters from Objects belongs to the cardboard archive in your attic — the one that holds the artificial tree in its original numbered sleeves, where the star is always packed last and always found last. The vocal is fingerpicked guitar, a quiet cello at the chorus, and a voice barely above a murmur, which felt right for something that spends most of its existence in the dark being perfectly patient about it.

[Verse 1] I hold the tree in pieces here, branch by numbered branch. The attic keeps a certain cold, no calendar, no chance. Eleven months the cardboard breathes that smell of storage, dust and pine. I know the weight of every part — the star is always last in line.

[Verse 2] You always come with that same look, half-searching, half-relieved. You pull the tape with careful hands, the way the young believed. The lights are tangled, same as last year, same as the year before. You say "I'm sure I fixed those" and laugh a little, then ignore.

[Chorus] For eleven months I keep the tree exactly as you left it. I'm not lonely in the usual sense — I'm patient, I'm collected. The roof beams hold the quiet well. The cold is good for keeping. And when you need the box again I'll be here, not sleeping.

[Verse 3] The branches slot together fast — you've done this thirty times. Each year you find the ornament you'd thought was left behind. And the house becomes a different house, the rooms arrange themselves. I watch from where you set me down beside the paint-stained shelves.

[Bridge] I don't mind January much. You fold me back with care. The lid goes down, the tape goes on — you know that I'll be there. Some boxes end up on the curb. I've known a few who went. But you still need the branches numbered, and I still hold each one bent.

[Outro] Eleven months. The twelfth you'll come. I know the weight. I know the sum. The star is always last in line. I hold the tree. The tree holds time.