Birthday
It is a ceremony, the blowing of candles, the cutting of a cake—the mess of cream and sponge in your mouth. The taste is sweet and familiar, like a newly formed wish, fashioned from all the ones you've made before.
You don't remember them in sequence—the things you ask for. You only recall those you wanted the most. Like the pair of neon pink roller skates you saw in the shop window when you were twelve. How deeply you felt their absence when you sat among the litter of torn wrapping paper and empty new possessions.
Or the year you turned sixteen; when your best friend's mother got really sick, and all you wanted was for her to be okay again. It was the year you learned that shooting stars were either a blessing or a curse, depending on what you wanted to believe.
Then there was that year you fell in love. The one where there weren't any candles—just you walking late at night through the city streets with your heart in pieces, wanting to give yourself to the first stranger who called you beautiful.
Since then it's been the same every year. As soon as the first match is struck, the smell of burning takes you backward through your memory. It stops you right at that moment on that warm, September night, as you watched the first trickle of melting wax hit the icing, and you couldn't think of a single damn thing you wanted—because he was standing there, in the flickering light, asking you to make a wish.
YOU ARE READING
Poetic Excerpts √
Poetry~~ If you are a dreamer, come in, If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer... If you're a pretender, come sit by my fire For we have some flax-golden tales to spin. Come in! Come in! Excerpts...
