I’ve not been especially active on this site for awhile. You know how it is with poets. Feast or famine. Self-aggrandisement one minute. Self-loathing the next. Ah well…

Therefore, I felt it a good way to break this space open once more, not with one of mine, but with a surprisingly tasty piece written by a young friend, Ruth. She is as intelligent as she is effervescent.

Please enjoy her words as I have. Perhaps have someone read it out loud to you while you sip mulled wine and let Ruth’s words warm you. I give you “My Gingerbread Church” by Ruth Quill.

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My Gingerbread Church

At 11 John’s Place, a gingerbread house is under construction.

The pathway paved with after eights, garden filled with candy canes.

The porch a little crumbly, entrance, two gingerbread slabs 

leaned against each other like a pointed hat.

–

A gingerbread ramp with chocolate finger railings,

liquorice door frames and jelly beans for handles.

A tube of icing to cement the jellied toilets to the floor,

a gingerbread roof sprinkled with hundreds and thousands.

–

There are jelly babies crying in the back room,

but our lullabies are full because we know what’s coming.

Jonathan snores and clarinet hums, samba drums and tap drums,

young shepherds and wise men, holy screams of labour.

–

Let’s build a gingerbread altar for him, bejewelled with smarties.

Let’s hang a gingerbread mobile from the ceiling.

Let’s light a gingerbread candle and watch it burn down till the special day,

–

when we’ll hand out gingerbread on the door, inscribed in royal icing

with liturgies and scripture, and then snap it in two,

and dunk one half into those brilliant cups of tea,

and eat it, soft and sweet, broken for us, broken for all.

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Ruth is a Scottish poet and freelance programmer based in Leith. Her writing is often inspired by childhood whimsy and play.