Cold and depressing aren't words you should expect from an elf on christmas. Not from the Shoe Making elves, not from Santa's elves. No one talks about the Cookie Making elves. The cookie factory is quiet. Cookies should be happy, uplifting. Our supposedly "homemade" cookies are no longer such. While the humans are on break, their factories are shut down. We become the providers. We work as you rest. We get no break, no pay, no health benefits, not even insurance. While you humans are enjoying your hot chocolate, and playing with snow, we work twenty hours a day in a factory that value their products more than the safety of their workers. Temperatures of less than -49°C, with no heaters, no doors - they don't even let us stay in the oven room, the only room that has heat. No, the North Pole is not like it seems. No legends or stories of us cookie elves. The others get to stay inside, while we work in non-insulated oak trees. There is no safety, no love, no care. The Cookie Making elves have it the worst. But we power dear old fat Santa. We make the cookies that Mrs. Claus say are hers. No recognition, not from Mr. Claus himself. No one even knows why the elves that disappear and get kidnapped are also the elves that appear in the Cookie Oak Tree. No one cares.

It's a weed, she said.

the pretty little yellow flower.

becuase her mommy told her

and my mommy told me

but I made a bouquet

and stuck them in a vase

on my bedroom windowsill.

I cried when they died -

when the lawnmower or time

chopped off their golden heads.

then I went to go pick more,

becuase I loved them.

I threaded the stems

into a crown on my hair.

and my swingset was my castle

and my backyard was my empire

and the gardens were my slaves:

I never envied those petals

groomed in careful dirt; no,

I was the queen of the weeds.

leaning against the fridge

against the book,

reading it from page to page

watching while the rain falls

you never came back

never drove back to the house

dark that night

lit up by the moon

wound by a rare, glowing ring

i know you’ve already forgotten

everything making me sad

reading through pages of writing

until you found the one that gave me away

sitting in a sad play then, which was so intense

sitting in a sad play now, acting like i’m somewhat alive

messing up my lines every time

everytime i get to the top of the stairs

i have to stand there a second and try not to cry

but i always do

eventually