I was hardly thinking when I climbed the three flights of stairs to my parents lofty bedroom, hardly thinking except for some indistinguishable urge for a few minutes away from the dinner party downstairs. The five degree drop in temperature, at the fifth step away from the room, was familiar. You felt it first on your face and the cold wood grain under your feet, these feelings happening simultaneously, and then the rest of you.

The same canopy bed was still directly in the middle of the room, opposing the bareness of the walls. My books were now neatly organized on some floating shelves that were meant to ingrain stability but now they were among book companions, my mothers, that I cringed at. I wanted to grab mine and hold them in one big pile in my arms, hearing the echo of some falling to the floor.

The only other perceptible difference in the room was the air moving more insistently than before. It could be seen on the curtains drawn along the bed, the way a light knit and moving air just run along each others surfaces. They had a ceiling fan installed last summer, had to get someone to reach the top of the fourteen foot ceilings. Some faulty installation made the remote useless, just another one in a drawer full of such defunct clutter. The air used to stop moving at the peak of the house, having the energy to rise to the top and then none left, no where else to go. Until they had these rotating blades installed, coercing the air to keep moving again.

I tried to recall last Christmas but couldn't remember a single decipherable thing about it, really, absolutely nothing. I know I was physically in this house, lived here even, but somehow no matter how hard I tried to remember, I couldn't.

I did recall the previous Christmas, the one two years ago. It was a month after I left his house, while he wasn't there, gone up north for work. I remember what I wore, I remember the ridiculous purple feather that kept slipping down my hair. I remember the progressive inebriation and some attempt at hiding it. I remember a 'Merry Christmas, Peanut' text at which point things became harder to recall. I remember climbing up on the bathroom sink. I remember shoving my face closer to the mirror, trying to entangle this face staring back at me with the mess I'd become. I remember feeling the heat of the vanity bulbs close to my skin, I remember burning my arm. I remember thinking 'that was just an accident', looking away immediately and crouching with my head between my knees, still balancing on the counter.

I walked into that bathroom and closed the door, locking it behind me. I undid the knot of leather I had wrapped around my waist. I grabbed at the zipper at the nape of my neck, pressing on the rounded bones for a moment, my eyes closed against the glaring reflection of the floor tiles. I undid the dress and let it fall, angling my left arm towards the mirror. The mark from the burn was still there but just a shadow, flickering away at some slight change in angle.