'tis the season

There's tape around the community center playground
marking the fallout from the weekend's frivolities
and seasonal imbibing.

A woman sits on her couch as her children sleep
and adds her bills. Bank statements spread,
she waits for her man to come home
from his work break up, Christmas pay dissolved
into alchoholic fume on his breath.

Domestic tragedy spawns like spores from a mushroom,
scattered the way a family scatters when the mother,
whose memories fused them all together, has died.
The way a similie is like another similie,
the way an evil fairy ring is seeded
as the black queen turns her card.