Great dark canyons, I walk through them. The skyscrapers loom and I am lost.

I have a dark hard blade running through me and I know this sword; romantic loneliness, I feel unsexy, alone and scared.

I ask the tiny latina cop where I can go to see the big tree. She says, On The Televeesion. She laughs. I smile as she lets me in through the exit gap.

A wobbly black lady cop lets me in through another gate just as she is shutting it up to block out the crowd.

The cherubic black girl on her mother’s shoulder in front of me is fussy and doesn’t want to wait for the tree to light up at Rockefeller Center.

The older white lady in front of us, who has been distracted or ignored for most of her adult life, brightens up and tries to get the child to stay for just a few more minutes. Just A Few More Minutes, Sweetie.

A sea of cell phones erupts in a low headachy light wave as the dark spruce twinkles, then pops into full garish color. Many rectangles turn this way and that, a carpet of weird light a hand’s length above the level of people’s heads.

The tree sits anticlimactically still and bright, in an orange wash of angry loud cloth.