Unsilence the Night
by Theodore Hill
I don’t want to destroy my neighbor’s Christmas lights. I want to love their warm glow. But their unwelcoming wires are wrapped around my throat, and there is nothing I can do but reach up and crush the glass bulbs between my fingers.
Every time Mrs. Matthews leaves my store, a cart full of peppermint and gingerbread, she casts a sidelong glance at the wrong sort of star I wear around my neck and chirps a “Merry Christmas” pointed enough to break skin. Her family’s display at the house beside mine is beautiful. I would love to admire the way it glitters and gleams. I want to go back to a time before I told my first-grade friend that Santa doesn’t visit kids like me, and her shocked exclamations slipped the first slivers of resentment into my flesh.
I can tolerate no more glass inside me. The shards have gathered for years until there is a new Kristallnacht under my skin, and now the tightening of the cables around my body is beginning to crush the fragments into sand.
The lights pressing against my eyes are blue and white, one hard against each socket. I slip my fingers under the wires to protect myself from seeing only the colors they chose for us.
“It’s sad,” she tells me, “so sad that you Jews don’t get to have lights this time of year.”
I break the silence of the night with a guttural cry, tearing the wires that try to bind my body to their understanding. As I send my blessing screaming into the cold, I remember there are many ways to be holy. As I kindle my shamash on the sparks of dying string lights, I remember there are many ways to light up the dark.
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Theodore Hill (he/him) is queer, trans, Jewish writer and librarian who lives somewhere in the US. He spends the majority of his non-work hours maintaining his recreational spreadsheet collection and regaling his friends and loved ones with deeply worrying story pitches.
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