I can smell cinnamon and evergreen. It's cozy and warm and I'm upstairs and I can feel the hard wood railing in my right hand. It's Christmas again. It's always Christmas here. I love this part of my brain. I can't always get to it when I'm awake, and part of it is closed to me when I'm dreaming.

I have confirmed my parents are asleep. I want to tiptoe down the stairs. I want to peek at the presents. I want to see father Christmas. Sheng Dan Lao Ren. Saint Nicholas. Even though he died a millenium ago, I'm supposed to be expecting him. This is a haiku of my life. A breath I have captured for myself that I breathe in and out again when I need to. It's before I begin walking down the stairs. It's after I have left my parent's bedroom, after I carefully closed door. After hearing my father snore and my mother mumble incoherently for three syllables. It sounded like any one of two thousand three hundred and seventy-four possible words in three different languages, but none of them are conclusive. She just mumbled. He snored. They were asleep. I close the door. I turn and walk towards the railing, and tippytoe towards the stairs.

What I do not know yet is that my brother Simon is already downstairs. He has already opened one of the presents. He did what I wanted to do, but although at first I am perturbed, next I become relieved, because it means he is going to get in trouble instead of me.

He is trying desperately to ascertain how to put the present back together so that his misdeed will remain unknown and go unpunished. He doesn't know I'm coming down the stairs. I do not know what I will see when I reach the bottom of the stairs. The knowledge of what I know about the future does color this haiku of a moment. This inhalation and exhalation at the top of the stairs, but it's like a permanent.. smirkle. The anticipation of what I knwo I will find, coupled with the anticipation of what I thought I might find. On so many levels, this is perhaps my favorite breath that I have ever breathed, and I play it ove