Gifts

Small giftwrapped boxes were left on every doorstep in our neighborhood, early one misty morning.

Most of us refused to touch them, wondering who brought them and why.

Neighbors watched those who opened their boxes from outside windows, anxiously anticipating.

The folklore professor recognized the markings on his box as the runes of a lost people.

He drew down a tome and read aloud how these people schemed to give deadly gifts.

But this warning was ignored or unheard by the bitter widow, and the rest.

Inside the boxes they each found a mirror cut in a unique shape. And they each gazed into it.

The widow saw in hers a lost youth in a life she thought she should have had. 

For this life, she offered the mirror her face, by cutting it off and laying it in the box.

Screams heard all along the streets told us the mirrors commanded no less of the others.