Birthday Cake Elegy

I’m waiting for a sign, wrapped neatly six times like an origami crane¹. Once along the long edge, two parallel worlds colliding. The walls are refusing to meet my eyes again. Do I push the knife in and twist or pull it out completely? Tell me, do you know which solution is the least cruel mercy?

In my bubblegum room I’m stuffing my face with fluffy vanilla cake, and it feels good. God watches in the corner. Coke white frosting in my ears like a child. God thinks I’m precious, always remembers my birthday, never leaves me stranded. Hurts me sometimes but never leaves me stranded. I’m naked and sticky and God likes it—likes me this way. Unfiltered, uninhibited. I’m a mini snow-globe of the great green earth. Bats and whales and gators. Shake me and dance in the cotton that falls out.

I put a foreign record on and watch my age dwindle by—a wild spring branch being whittled to a skewer. Impaled marshmallows at the end of my breath. Put me in the fire. Sometimes it feels close. Sometimes I don’t mind. Coals under my feet. California is the predecessor. No one will be spared. I’ll never light the truth in age because only you can prevent forest fires, and a lady never tells.

Time is funny because the birds (imaginary) don’t care much about it. Uncaged body and uncaged mind. I think I was hatched out of an amber egg and placed here by some sadistic force. I get it though, it’s fun to demolish ant hills. God says it’s okay because I’m allergic. Force feeds me more cake. Eat or get eaten. Tears well in my big, brown eyes. Gold confetti stuck to my lips. I swallow the tiny glass along with the fistfuls of cake. The sweetness hugs me, makes me feel less empty. I’m a jar waiting for the lightning bugs to come back home. I count my wishes nimbly in my Pepto-Bismol room—one for every candle.

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Wish Number One—to always know when someone is lying. God and I, we shoot the shit. I like to lie, but God is incredibly honest. I like that honesty, and I want to know when I’m not being afforded it by someone else. I can lie because this is my world and you’re just living in it. You cannot. Because this is my world. And you’re just living in it.

Wish Number Two—nail polish that never chips. Half of my body is somewhere else. I’ve always hated fractions, but I can tell that I’m not whole. Let this one thing be whole. Slathered color with the same ingredients in my cigarette carton. Let me have pretty hands to wrap around ugly things, like curdled milk and day-old semen and sticky nickels and roadkill offal.

Wish Number Three—an endless supply of drugs and the ability to instantly sober. Who wants to be awake for any of this, tell me? Can you imagine open heart surgery without the general anesthetic? That’s what everyday life feels like. I could do with a little bit of Morphine on the dime. And a failsafe for the days I edge life-over.

Wish Number Four—love that never runs out. It isn’t supposed to, law of conservation of energy and all that, but I came out of the womb funny, and I think that triggered something putrid inside me. All the perfume in the world cannot hide that I’m a beggar.

Wish Number Five—wings to carry me far away. Big, unsightly things. Ones that pierce through the skin of my back and leave my muscles hanging in shreds outside the exit wound. Blood dripping down my sides in heavy black streaks and pooling in the dimples above my ass. The cute little ones guys like to stick their thumbs in when they’re fucking from behind. I’ve got a positive ape index, let’s put that freakish stature to good use. I’ll fly myself to the moon. I’ll swallow it. Watch me.

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1. there are more than six folds in an origami crane