Yesterday was your birthday
All day, my hands weighed me down
With the itch to text you to wish you a good day
With the need to grip a steering wheel, navigating me to your house
With the idleness feeling sinful as I wasn’t baking you confetti cake
With the feeling of being misplaced against anything that wasn’t your skin
To keep my hands busy I piled memory into a grinder
And
Ground
Ground
Ground
Turned the parts as if I was winding up a music box
Because this sound was full
In comparison to
The pit of my stomach that was still waiting to
Share your birthday cupcakes with you
When the flashbacks filtered into my brain
The high was pulled lower still
By the weight of my hands
So that all I could do was cross them
And pray a prayer worth all of the birthday gifts I’ve ever given
“Please, God, on this day make him forget himself.
Please, God, let him find a sweet tooth for things other than the melancholic poison he puts in his coffee
Please, God, let him not remember the time when he broke open too wide and let me slip out of him
Please, God, allow him to feel something, on this birthday, even if it’s just his birthday candle blisters
Please, God, give him his heart back, as it is buried in the past that I was never gifted to know
Please, God, let me not weigh him down with a guilt seed that would root him to a chapter in his life that he wishes he could rewrite
Please, God, let me stop dreaming of him.
I know what it means when I dream of someone.
I know it’s your way of wordlessly telling me I’m being thought of.
Do not let him think of me.
Please, God, fill the parts of him that his worker’s hands have carved out of himself so cleanly.
Visit the wounds that sit in his posture
Will his veins to carry his soul back to his heart
Remind him that his sadness is his own special brew
That he continues to sip at his leisure
Help him understand that feeling lonely
Comes from his own brain that remembers isolation better than love
Please, God, give him
A better year.
A good year.
A year when his time won’t be stolen by someone so insignificant
That he has to translate her words into the language of gibberish,
Until they mean nothing at all anymore.
Please, let him find someone.
Please, let that person captivate him.
Please, let that person know him.
Please, let that person sit in bed with him and feel their good fortune in their bones.
Please, let that person see the moon in his fingertips and realize that they can control the tides, if he wants them too.
Please, let him smile at this person, in ways that would be ugly in pictures, but beautiful in my memory.
Please, God, let that person be HIM.
Please, God, if you won’t cut the ribbon to the start of his new life, at least give him the scissors.
He will say “No, Thank you.”
He will say he does not need your help, because he knows the power of his paint brush,
and that he is too busy washing color out of his brushes to take hold of the harsh metal,
And then he will make confetti of your offer.
He will shred every pleasant thought that comes his way.
He will cut himself open and gaze at every beautiful thing, insisting he sees the wonder.
He will not see the wonder.
He will say he understands the things that live inside himself.
But he will turn their volume down
And tune deeply into the metallic music of sorrowful hollowness
He will go to extreme efforts to ignore the starting line that sits just outside of his comfort zone.
But, God, Please,
Send the trees to trip him
Make the animals chase him
Let him
Throw tantrums that are disguised as the silent treatment
But wrap him up in his ribbon, so that the only way he can move
Is forward.
Remind him that the scissors are always in his hand,
And he needs to learn that
They need not destroy.
Make the clouds rain on his new life,
And remind him that he has a knack for watercolors.
Lure him with oils
Guide him with spraypaint
This Year, show him the paint that
Will reteach color to him.
This year, let him understand that colors are bright,
But not the enemy.
Let him not fear red from the times that he bled,
Let him not cast away yellow, because the sun got in his eyes,
Let him not hate blue, because he almost drowned.
Build in him a reservoir for happiness, that could sustain him through this life that has already been too tragic.
God, on his birthday, please indulge these heavy hands so that they may not cross the fingers for his return,
Because God, it was not I who was born today,
And it was not me who was stiffed on birthday cake.
And though this prayer is selfish,
It is the only thing I can give him,
That he cannot refuse.”
And as I looked down to see my clasped hands, I couldn’t help remember
When one of them was yours.
And for my final birthday wish to you ,
I hoped that only your sleep
Could be relieved of the white knuckle tensions of restlessness
So that you may sleep, and know the peace that I felt,
When I slept next to you.
Happy Birthday,
I miss you.
Happy Birthday,
I’m sorry.
Happy Birthday,
This is selfish,
But Happy Birthday,
So were you.