27
12 AM. I am a year older, or so I tell myself. In truth, I am just a day older. On a day like any day, but how I love to tag my name and birth on it and call it mine. Midnight in December. Around me, the night crinkling like dark foil. Crackling with things dead and alive. With things deadening and livening. With things in-between. I have always been something of an in-betweener. I have always liked the hush of corridors more than the rooms they lead to. The train more than the arriving. I would rather be the lowland of the hyphen than the rugged peaks of meaning on either side. For a little while on this birth-day, I am in-between. And then I go, from one age to the next, I go.
In the beginning, I was born. Lifted out through a wound. I had lungs that could cry. Later I was named. After a word in an old song my parents liked. I do not know who this name belongs to. But I call it mine. Already, it is December. I cook a birthday meal. I scrape the red oil off the bottom of the pan, thick with flakes of chilli and tomato skins. These days, living is simple. There are people I love. And I call them mine, even though they are not. Like me, they belong to the elements, growing older. They sing me a song. Again, it is December. I cut through the layers of a cake and find nothing at the bottom. I lick raspberry jam off a yellow plastic knife. Somewhere, this poem always was. Somewhere, in the secret air, beyond where our desires and illusions collide. All I do is write it down, as I turn through the years. And then I call it: mine.
Happy birthday, Anagha! Wishing you a year filled with poems waiting to be written and moments that feel fully, wonderfully yours!! The imagery of midnight as ‘dark foil’ and the hyphen of the lowlands is so striking—you captured the soul of a birthday!
Happy being born day