Alexa Daskalakis

The Unnamed Holiday Chair​

Some absences are loud. Others are arranged.

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Some people are left out of Christmas.
Others are edited out.

Not forgotten—
just deliberately uninvited.
Not unloved—
just treated like a liability.

They’re asked,
“What are your plans for Christmas?”
But it’s not a question.
It’s a quiet eviction.
This isn’t your house.

Their name doesn’t make the card.
Their chair isn’t set.
Their memory is replaced
with someone easier to include.

They’re told:
“We already did gifts,”
“You get nothing,”
while someone else
unwraps ten thousand dollars.

They’re told:
“You can stop by next weekend,”
as if love were
a crowded waiting room.

They’re told:
“It’s just the family.”
And they learn—quietly, permanently—
they were never considered part of it.

Somewhere,
a child stares at a holiday card:
“The Whitmore Family.”
It’s her last name.
But not her life.
She wasn’t included.
The card was sent anyway.

One year,
she reached out—because they hadn’t.
The reply wasn’t warm.
It was vaguely mocking.
Like she’d imagined the chair herself.

And when the girl looks up at the stars,
she realizes it was still her favorite holiday—
not because they remembered her,
but because she remembered everything.
They weren’t missing her.
They were missing
the star at the top of the tree.

And the girl is invited
into warmer, wider homes—
with more room,
more light,
and more to give
than what they lost.

And when the adults back then
who asked where she was
finally look again—
she turns around as a woman.
She only points at the stars.

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Disclaimer: This poem is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.