Birthday Blues

Kae on a couch surrounded by stuffed animals circa 2000

I got me some birthday blues. Blues like sorrow. Blues like swimming pool. Blues like not swimming in a pool. Blues like drowning. Blues like lost at sea. Like sea. Like m/other memory don’t you know that every birthday I pass through takes me farther from you? From us?

I had a friend who I promised that by age twenty-five I would celebrate my birth. But we aren’t friends anymore. And I’m not twenty-five yet. Go figure. So I own the blues. I try to leave the birthday. I declare that there is nothing special to celebrate on the worst day of my life. I try to forget the promise i made my then-friend now not-friend anymore. I hope they’re doing well. I wonder if they’ll remember my day. I’m trying to remember every day but this one.

I got me some birthday blues. They course under my skin and make it explode. They invade my insides and disprerse terror. They hold history better than I could have ever asked. I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t want these blues I just wanted a mother but we don’t always get what we cry for. I didn’t. Not really. I mean, I receieved love. I gained a family. But I still got these blues like sorrow. Blues like swimming pool. Blues like not swimming in a pool. Blues like drowning. Blues like lost at sea. The sea. Like memory. Like us, m/other— unexplored.

I’ll be twenty-three this year. I got a new life. I’m from New Life Home. I’m from home…