Christmas Stolen

This is a little something I wrote from a sad memory, a memory of a time when I used to always be gone away from home. You see, I was a Sailor. Part of the responsibilities and expectations of a “Navy guy” is the expectation of being away form your family. It hurts, especially when you have a child as young as mine was when I went away for the first time—she was three.

What follows is a poem about visiting a park decorated with Christmas lights the night of my deployment on the 27th of November, 2000. Twenty-two years later and it still haunts me. This is what I wrote.