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Birthday
When winds whet their edges
on the angles of roofs and long
manes of rain leave traces on my window,
when the last leaves let go, let go,
have all let go, and it’s almost winter again —
don’t remember my birthday.
Give me another one: let it be in May —
sated, lit: the month my children were born —
but not in November, gray-gorged
as the morning when I first gasped,
un-welcomed by my parents. Forty years later,
to the day, I closed the casket at last
on my father’s bloated face, his white
mane slicked back — I almost stroked it —
no one with me
at the Antwerp crematory: my mother
too busy planning the funeral reception, and he
had no family. Not a leaf was
left on the old cemetery oaks, even
the wind had nothing to hang onto, so it
slapped the ashes into the rain that soaked
the fur coat my mother had forced me
to wear: Do it for me, look like a lady for once.
But no one was there to see me except for the funeral
employees, eager to get it over with:
Belgium was playing Germany at soccer that day.
So let’s say I was born in the heart of May,
leaves alive with rain, oaks in the park
freckling benches with mellow shades.
Send me a card then, or take me
out to a sidewalk café, and let’s
not talk too much. That would be plenty,
that would be enough.
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Copyright © by Laure-Anne Bosselaar
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