So I turned 32 today.
Penniless birthday,
almost.

Howling rains
woke me up
and I fell back asleep.
And the cat respected my
birthday.
Did not claw my lips like
my usual feline alarm.

The birthday flowers
in the morning
were vivid.
My mother bought them,
deep red and
deep yellow.

I requested
for birthday lunch
my mother’s
home-cooked burgers
and fries sprinkled with
iodized salt.
And I filled myself up
with them hot and crispy
fries
and didn’t care if they
stayed inside my guts
until 2014.

I never really liked cake.
Opted for a dozen original glazed.
Heavenly donuts.
Two of them tumbled down
the escalators.
The first birthday flaw.
Like a bleep in the
grand scheme of
birthday things.

I brought them to a Greek
restaurant.
My mom and dad
and two sisters.
Not really hungry.
Just hungry
for a different taste.

The salad had candied
walnuts among the greens
and the reds.
Progressive Greece.

Then a classic lamb dish.
Classic Greece.
And the waiters
in stuffy white
bellowed a birthday
greeting, dropping the “h”
from my name.
Belted out a non-Grecian
birthday song.
No Grecian dance.

But they gave me
an ice cream treat.
Lighted a solitary
blue candle, which
balanced on the semi-liquid
hills of vanilla, caramel and
walnuts.
The small ice cream hills
illuminated by
the dancing
birthday light.