birthdays

birthdays
half of the world doesn’t celebrate them
in my birth lottery they were streamers and candles and cake
children screaming with delight in cone-shaped cardboard hats
and thin chin-prickling elastic strings
and then they were yearning for firsts
windows down and wind whooshing by your ears into the sunset
red white and blue stickers and anti-war ballots
and then they were dinner parties and regretted drinks
and then glass stems between the fingers of others but not your own
and then they were nothing
because half of the world doesn't celebrate them and neither should you.

and then they were the plastic oven knob crumbling in your palm,
improvising as homo sapiens with scotch tape in a house of cards.
the daily pleasure of chalky antacids, preferentially pink, and two pillows.
the spanx that cruelly indent your skin, itching
hours after you’ve stripped them off and abandoned them
on the bedroom floor you used to keep vacuumed and clean.

then every day became a birthday
a reminder of age, of youth, moons, eggs drifting away
and with them your heart
afloat in a canoe on the muddy waters of the mississippi
or maybe the styx