Dear Santa Claus,
This year, I write
on behalf of my entire family.
Please forgive them,
for they have lost all faith.
Or, perhaps, forgive me,
for I have been too blind
to see that they never believed.

For my mother,
I ask for a father figure.
I ask for a childhood
in which a man before my father
loved her and cherished her.
I ask for her a father
different from the one she got.
One who didn’t outwardly
love my uncle more.
One who didn’t
neglect her.
One who didn’t spit curses
when she wrote him letters.
One who asked more about her
and a little less about her brother.
I wish for her a father
who wanted her,
who wanted to be at her wedding,
and wanted to meet her children.

Or maybe it was better that way.
Maybe that made her stronger.
Perhaps I wish for her a stepfather
different from the one she got.
One who loved his stepchildren
as much as he loved
his biological son.
One who didn’t neglect her
as much as the father
that left her.
One who thought of her
as much as he thought of himself.
For my mother, I ask for a man
she could point to proudly and say,
“Yes, this is my father.”
I wish for her childhood back.

For my father,
I wish for the abolition of alcohol.
I ask for a life
that wasn’t full of reasons
to drink into delirium.
I wish for him a mother
who didn’t down a bottle
of Merlot every night,
and a father whose ice water
wasn’t straight vodka.
I ask for you to grant him
happiness without poison.
My father is a habitual creature,
and this inclination is toxic.

Or perhaps he wouldn’t need that
if he had a job he loved.
Perhaps he wouldn’t drown
in whiskey each night
if it wasn’t too late for him to go back.
My daddy wanted to be
a marine biologist.
His love for the ocean is unwavering.
I ask for you to make him young again,
let him go back.
Set him on a path
that lets him study the dolphins
and still meet my mother
without going to business school.
I ask for his happiness.

For my oldest brother,
I ask for different footsteps
he could fall into.
My grandmother and
my mother drink.
My father and my
grandfather drink.
And they drink.
I wish for him to have
adults he could look up to
that are not prone to drunkenness
and abusing their livers.
I can see him falling into it.
My poor brother,
only nineteen years old,
falling into a place I prayed
he would never end up.
At a wedding, I cried
when my mother gave him
his eighth beer of the night.
On a beautiful vacation, I cried
when my father applauded
his tenth rum and coke
of that night.
For my oldest brother,
I wish for the obliteration
of this lifestyle.
I wish for an image of life
without alcohol.

For my second brother,
I wish for a family
that respected him.
I can see it wearing him down.
My ill-fated brother,
he is only seventeen,
but I have seen this coming for years.
Time and time again, I have watched
as my parents neglect him,
as my parents brush it off
as middle child syndrome.
They call it typical - it’s not.
Or, at least, it shouldn’t be.
I have seen him disrespected
by the brother he still looks up to,
and frowned upon by our parents.
It has made him mean,
a malevolent soul.
I try my very best to not lash out
when he takes his anger out on me.
There are three of us,
me and my two wayward brothers,
and my second brother has
the brightest future.
He has the most going for him.
I ask for a family who could see that.
I ask for a family who would
acknowledge that.

For myself,
I ask for nothing
but the granting
of these wishes.
That is my
only plead.

Sincerely,
the true embodiment
of desperation