Birthday thirty-six

My boss took me out to lunch for my birthday yesterday

Talked about life, where I’m at, the punk show I went to during the weekend

Let fly I was happy, felt blessed

Kept a straight face

Charade of accounting for days as if I have any pride left

Spent my birthday at home alone trying to write a letter

To chuck onto the pyre of all the others she has never answered

Went out for forty minutes while a realtor showed the fourth house I am trying to sell

Got a flat tire; sat in an empty Goodyear lobby

Reading the Count of Monte Cristo on my Kindle

Drove back clicked send on the letter like leaking air out the balloon

For the pressure holding off thoughts of dying

Birthdays make me think about what if this was my last day

What would I say, do, that’s why I woke up and decided to write her

As if I was a ghost barking at the living unable to be heard or hear

Just hoping that a spiritual barter was possible

Asking what happened inside her to choose what she did

I just want to be able to understand to split the pile of fact and fiction

Solace and closure for Sisyphus to let him be crushed and just quit

Just quit trying, trying at anything most of all thinking of her, of love

Of being afraid of taking a damn drink and overdoing it

Seeing couples hold hands and feel like a fog of numb spin stomach acids

Feeling too much like there is no point in attempting to connect

Beyond the random

Because even if I could, the glaze would take over

I would just want to end it all, destroy myself, get back to that place

Of not wanting a god damn thing, because all the easy shit has a price tag

The only way out is surrender to the void

Thinking of a baby boy almost born three times and me split here

Watching the porch monsters and dreaming about nightingales

Wondering how the mermaid could be so distant; I could be so easy to forget

As if I never existed but in an idea in my head

And if I could un-remember myself I could be as easily reprieved

I could dance on and everyone else could act like they were happy about their birthdays