I could star in a Hallmark movie, except
I don’t live in a cozy New England village
or someplace that might be the North Pole
or Canada. Even if my supportive, big-city,
corporate assistant marked the perfect
destination on a map, I’d probably head
in the other direction, just to go my own way.
I’m not planning on traveling anywhere anyway
even if it is for an unexpected business trip,
which, by definition, wouldn’t be unexpected.
I can’t be in a Hallmark movie because
I already gave up my high-powered career.
Wait, the recession took it from me. I wasn’t
too old, too overqualified, and too female.
I can’t be in the movie because I don’t crave
the comforting squeeze of my handsome high
school ex-boyfriend, whose grip was tight
and left marks, the hallmarks meant to hold
me in place. Even if I did decide to move
to a snow-covered hamlet, no one would see
me. I’m an invisible heroine, marked by
simmering, not the good kind, as in soup,
but the bitter kind, as in arsenic. I’m much
closer to being an Agatha Christie murderess
than the weakest of Hallmark protagonists.
I’d never win the gingerbread house contest,
or even the cookie-baking competition.
Don’t even ask me to help out with the
ice sculpture display. Me, with a chainsaw?
I wouldn’t make a dime in the kissing
booth because of that problem I have
with invisibility. I guess I’ll never get
to shrug my kind-of-pretty shoulders
into my handsome ex-boyfriend’s oversized
flannel after we come in from the snow
to light a fire, drink hot chocolate, and smooch
under the mistletoe. I have no regrets
because I never did like Hallmark movies,
except at Christmas.
Randi Lynn Sanders is currently enrolled in the Master of Fine Arts program in Creative Writing at Mississippi University for Women. Randi lives on the gulf coast of Florida, where she maintains her own financial advisory practice while honing her craft in her spare time, usually before or after market close.
Really like the play of reality against the background of happily ever after.