Vox Meditantis

Every Boxing Day, we assemble in Aunt Margaret’s parlour,
where the wallpaper hasn’t changed since 1987
and the air tastes of potpourri and unspoken resentment.
I hate it with a passion that surprises even me –
this ritual of forced jollity, this performance
of connection we abandoned years ago.

Yet still I come, bearing wine and practised smiles,
because absence would be noted, discussed,
dissected over tea and biscuits in the weeks to follow.
“She couldn’t even be bothered to show her face,”
they’d say, and somehow that seems worse
than enduring three hours of suffocating propriety.

We talk of nothing – weather, traffic, the price of petrol –
whilst skirting round the subjects that matter:
Uncle David’s drinking, Cousin Sarah’s divorce,
the terrible silence where Grandmother’s laughter used to be.
We raise our glasses in hollow toasts,
photograph our togetherness for posterity.

I watch my mother’s jaw tighten as she pours the tea,
see my father check his watch when he thinks no one’s looking.
We are all complicit in this charade,
this yearly proof that we are still a family,
still capable of gathering in one room
without the roof caving in from the weight of our pretence.

And when I finally leave, kissing cheeks goodbye,
promising faithfully to ring more often,
I feel the strangest mixture of relief and shame –
grateful to escape, yet knowing with grim certainty
that next December, I’ll receive the invitation,
and next December, I’ll accept.

Bob Lynn | © 2025 Vox Meditantis. All rights reserved.