I watch as the world spins.

Lisa is setting up the dining table, a pudgy baby with pink cheeks resting on her hip. My niece has her mothers eyes; big, blue and inquisitive, and her father’s black hair, growing in tufts on the top of her soft skull.

They asked me to hold her, once. I kept thinking about her unformed bones- that self destruct button atop her head- that I would somehow find a way to push. Or I would hold her wrong, and her skin would pinch, and she would cry, and I would get it in my head that somehow she knew that I wasn’t equipped for something like this. That I wasn’t designed to have a baby, or family at all, and my bi-annual appearances at family events weren’t fooling anybody.

“Can you pass me the tongs, please?” Lisa asks, her free hand outstretched behind her as she coos to the baby. “Babe? The tongs?”

My brother-in-law slinks past me into the kitchen, and I’m engulfed in his beer and cigarette breath, “No worries.”

John makes his way to the dining table, placing the tongs carelessly on the wooden top. Predictably, Lisa grabs the tongs and puts them in a perfectly spaced line with the wooden spoon and the carving knife already laid out.

There’s four places set, each adorned with personalised plates on top of vintage doilys; even the babies high chair, with its white legs wrapped with green and red tinsel, has its own matching set.

I used to have one of those plates. Our mother had made them herself and we each glazed our own. I remember thinking Lisa’s was so much better than mine, with her name written in perfect cursive and little cartoon elves that looked like they jumped from a children’s movie drawn around the rim. Mine was a mess of block letters and poorly drawn Christmas trees, the type of thing my mother would lie about and say ‘has a lot of potential’, all while displaying Lisa’s as though it belonged in a museum and hiding mine at the bottom of the cupboard.

Now it lies in pieces somewhere, shrapnel of it still crushed underneath the dining room rug. Remnants of a fight long forgotten by everyone else and rotting within me.

I watch as John takes baby Susie out of Lisa’s arm, and hoists her into the air above his head. He blows raspberries against her stomach, and her face lights up and she giggles and giggles as though it’s the funniest thing that’s ever happened. Susie smacks around her fathers head, pulling at strands of hair and scratching the lines around his eyes- completely free of the concept of malice or consequence.

I watch a little girl, who’s whole world is the people in front of her. Who’s yet to taste the bitterness of the outside air, the sour curdles of rejection, the sweet familiarity of loneliness.

Who doesn’t yet have that sinking feeling in her gut, that if she were to slip away no one would feel her absence.

“Don’t get her too excited before dinner!” Lisa scolds.

I say, “Yes, because god forbid anyone actually has fun on Christmas Day,” but it goes unheard.

My father takes his seat at the head of the table, rubbing his liver-spotted hands together at the sight of the feast before him. My mother sits diagonally from him, prim and proper in every way, preparing for everyone to sit down so she can start saying Grace. I check to make sure that there’s still light in her eyes. She sees right through me, and I realise that she looks younger than she ever has.

Lisa is next to take her seat. Quickly followed by baby Susie, as John tucks her into her high chair so he can start carving the Christmas ham.

Four adult sized pieces are placed on each adult sized plate. Tiny chunks are sliced and dropped onto Susie’s.

My mother takes every ones hands and says her Grace. If I imagine hard enough, I can almost feel the softness of her palm against mine again; the slickness of her baby pink nail polish as I stroke her thumbnail the way I used to. I can feel our elbows bump together, as they did every Christmas, as we both dug into whatever roast was on that year.

I wonder if she thinks about it too.

They each devour their first servings within minutes, and serve themselves another.

No one cries, no one argues, no one really speaks at all.

I watch as the world still spins.

I erased myself from the frame, and the scene continues to play out as though I was never scripted into it.

No one leaves the porch light on anymore. No one listens to old voicemails, just to hear me say their name.

There is no place for me at the table.

I know as soon as the sun shines through these windows, I have to leave.

I know that soon I’ll be without the caress of her hand, the angles of her body, the sheen of her sweat as she lay across my chest.

There’s things that I won’t miss, of course. Her slightly jagged fingernails, the ugly fuscia lipstick that stains the rims of coffee cups, the wet towel she leaves on the floor after every shower. The way she insists on correcting me every time my grammar is slightly off, or the way she gets in my face when I pack the dishwasher wrong.

She likes to slap me, when I’ve said something especially rotten. She brings out the worst in me, that evil seed that lies beneath, no matter how much I try to push it down.

We burn too bright. We engulf each other. I feel the licks of her flames across my skin, and I know she feels the same from me. Our kingdom has turned to ashes, right below our feet, and we’ve been too entrapped in the warmth of each other to notice.

I watch her as she sleeps. My eyes trace the dark lashes that fan her freckled cheeks, the perfect angles of her eyebrows and sharpness of her jaw, pointy elbows that dig into my ribs, hips that press into my own. Every inch of her is firm and stubborn by design, as if every one of her features was crafted to make her hard to infiltrate.

Yet I know, when her deep breath warms my skin like this, that I’ve done it. I’ve wormed my way in through a crack forgotten by the gods that made her; and burrowed in where it’s tender enough to hurt.

I know the ache will worsen before it gets better. I know she’ll feel the loss of me, the same way I will feel the loss of her. I will long for her weight on top of me, for the sting of her slap and the scratch of her nails. For the tender words she says only to me, and the insults she directs only at me.

She will miss me, too. Until she doesn’t.

I will free her of the burden of us. Of the pain that we have become too accustomed to, the pain that feels like home.

I will spend the rest of my life, wishing that I were strong enough to withstand it. That I were strong enough to feel the weight of love without letting it crush me.

I will spend the rest of my life asking myself ‘what if I stayed?’, while also thanking god that I got out when I did.

When the sun comes up, I promise myself that I will leave her.

When the sun comes up.

Can’t you feel it?

Can’t you feel it breaking us?

The secret that you keep has embedded itself between us like a splinter, and the more you hold back the further it wedges itself in.

Don’t you want to be free?

I see it take its toll on you, day after day, week after week. I see the fresh bruises that overlap healing yellow ones, I see the cracks in your lips and the grind of your teeth. The skin of your knuckles that’s calloused over.

I feel when you leave at night. I feel the weight shift in the bed like it’s my world shifting off it’s axis. Everytime, I try to will myself to speak. To ask you where you’re going. To ask you what you’ve gotten yourself into. To make you promise you will come back.

What happens when one day you don’t?

Every night I stay awake and wait for you. I tuck myself into my side of the bed and tell myself that any minute now, I’ll feel the weight of your arms across my waist again.

Hours that I will never get back slip away into the night and there is nothing I can do to stop it. Nothing I can do to stop you.

Please, my love. Please, let me help you. Please, tell me what you’re doing or at least where you’re going.

Before it’s too late for us.

Before it’s too late to save you.