THE CHRISTMAS TREE
He opened the box with his eyes closed, his breath held. The colorful ornaments were quietly asleep on the cream-colored paper. On the surface of those decorations, he saw the sad reflection of his face and the curvy shadows of his pointy hair. In the box, there were layers upon layers of ornaments and streamers which adorned their Christmas tree every year. The small, plastic Christmas tree that his parents had bought in the city of Vanadzor a long time ago, even before he was born. Its skeleton had grown weak over the years, its green leaves had melted here and there from the heat of the lights. Every year, when he placed the tree, his father would use a copper wire to fasten the tree’s thin trunk to the four-legged base, so that it would not fall over.
At first, the
