This year we decorated for Christmas. Got drunk and strung garlands from Command hooks on the wall. Wrapped wire-shot ribbons around our gas meter, lettered our names on small felt stockings. Put a Maine wreath on the door. My roommate arranged within it pine cones, on angles. “Shouldn’t they be straighter?” I slurred. “Or like, at the bottom?” She shook her head and concentrated, binding the pine cones tight. Then she raised her hands up and I looked. She was right. “Angles,” she said. She’s in her third year of the MFA Directing program at Columbia. “I know about angles.”

The tree was small, a couple of feet, the base nailed directly into it. We bought it at Whole Foods using a LivingSocial voucher that was about to expire. Ten dollars for twenty. It was such a stupid way to buy a Christmas tree that I wanted to tell everyone I met, as though in telling it we would be absolved. Do you know how you get a tabletop tree in New York City, in 2011? I do, I would say. Of course I know it’s a bubble. Groupons and small business and whatever. But isn’t it funny how sometimes you can be just within that bubble, under the surface, hands splayed to keep your weight from being the weight that cracks it? My roommate objected to multicolored lights so we got white, instead, and she wound them around the tree while I outfitted the bathroom cabinet in sprigs of glitter. We bought a nightlight, too, shaped like an angel. She fades from one color to the next, an LED loop. “GREETINGS, PROPHET!” I yelled. I couldn’t remember any other lines. Bing Crosby crooning in the next room. “GREETINGS…PROPHET!!!”

Then last week we shook it all off and made our days normal. Got up at the correct time and went grocery shopping. I stopped leaning in to inhale the wreath every time I unlocked our door. I started to dread the reflection of treelights, down the hall. It was Thursday when, maybe I’d had a beer, but, I felt sad. Refilling the Brita. Next to the tree. That had never really smelled like a tree and in fact had, scent-wise, been pretty quiet on the subject of itself. But it was a tree. Saturday I had other things to do but, with resolve, went to the kitchen with boxes and bags. I started with the ornaments and then the ribbons and then the stockings and the garlands and the glitter. The tree was quiet. My roommate, a different one, came into the kitchen. Wearing shorts, it was warm outside. “I’m decommissioning Christmas,” I announced, as though in telling it I would be absolved. “Oh,” she said, then asked, “How long have you had that tree?” I looked at her. I didn’t know what she meant. “It’s a real tree,” I said. “Oh!” she said. “I didn’t even realize!” My gut swayed. “Yeah. You’ve been living with a real tree,” I said.

For a day and a half it sat unclothed in our kitchen, all else packed up and stored. I wanted to take it to the park down the block but for a day and a half wasn’t going that direction. So it wasn’t until this morning that I put on gloves and picked it up roughly. Took it to the basement, by the trash cans, where someone else had propped up another tree, taller and bare. I laid ours down and stepped on it, then crouched to pull off the base. Nailed-in, like I said. My leverage was wrong so I twisted. A piece of the base flew off and hit no one. The branches shook. I bent the nail but it was a long nail. Closed my eyes. Then was holding the base and stepping on the tree. I put the base in the trash and picked up the tree and we walked through the park. Morningside, where a stack of trees has grown high across from the playground. I walked around the pile and laid our tree on the far side, so I wouldn’t be compelled to look at it every time I passed. I didn’t say anything but I thought about it. I walked away and put my hands up to my face, to brush my hair back. My hands smelled like pine. My gloves smelled like pine. All the way to work this morning, needles clinging to the hem of my coat.