Birthday

I’m 23 tomorrow… feels weird putting it into the universe after trying not to think about it all year. I am definitely not where I thought I’d be as I turn another year older.

Throwing a surprise party can be extremely nerve-wracking, especially in a shared living space where the person you are trying to surprise can walk in at any given moment.

Every year, one more poem in free verse— / Still frames of silent tears and raucous nights / Snapshots documenting my best and worst / An artist’s impression of maturity and moonlight

Today, you get a year older. And you getting older means I, too, am getting older. The more I grow up, the closer I feel to you.

These suggestions are generic enough that they’re not specific to any person, but niche enough that people likely don’t already have them.

You’re not eating sweet potato cake, but instead, it is a comically large slice of pizza. Strangely, it makes sense. Everything makes sense. 

turning twenty-one feels like / i’ve just turned seven three times. / the lessons feel so simple. / but simple is not easy / to do well. being grown up / is but the sum of small parts

I want to laugh more. I want to share happiness, but more importantly, I want to share the pieces of my mom that I always carry to the people in my life.

Love was the only thing that we could always afford. And it was worth more than any gift or dollar amount.

This birthday blues was a side effect of my disabled childhood, my birthday a casualty of my own internalized ableism, its voice ever-present: Nobody will want to come[; you don’t have any friends anyway; and you don’t have anything in common with people your age.