Spillt Ink

Why do people with fenced back yards, fenced with wooden slats, decorate this sight-unseen area with lights and figurines?

Is there a Secret Winter Wonderland Cabal?

I want to join.

The neighbors across the alley, across my neighbor's back yard, across the street have put up Christmas lights for the first time. I can see them through my bedroom window. It looks like faery, red and white, tiny and tiny, multiplied by hundreds.

These neighbors have no time frame for when they turn the lights on. Never in the early morning or the late morning. Sometimes, they are on at dusk. Sometimes, they are on later, say, ten pm. Some nights, they aren't visible at all. Some nights, they can be seen as I travel the street the house is on, from a block away. Some nights, it is one am or three am and I want to look out the window and see faery, believe in faery, and when I glance that way nothing is there but darkness.