Every birthday
has empty chairs.
People speak
of aging
as though it is only
the privilege
of becoming older.
They forget
the arithmetic of grief.
Every year I gain
is another year
someone else did not.
There are people
who live inside
my birthdays now.
People I loved.
People I lost.
Versions of myself
I had to abandon
because they would have
followed someone
straight into the fire.
Dreams
that once had names.
Futures
I decorated carefully
before learning
they would never become rooms
I could walk into.
Tonight,
I set places for them.
Not literally.
I am not that haunted.
Probably.
But somewhere
between the cake
and the candles,
they arrive.
The baby
I could not bring home.
The girl
who thought forever
meant something different.
The woman
who loved people
she had to survive.
The lives
I might have lived
if one decision,
one death,
one man,
one court date,
one heartbeat
had gone another way.
I do not ask them
to leave.
Grief has sat
at my table
too long
to be treated
like a stranger.
So I pour it something.
Let it stay.
Then I light
thirty-one candles.
Not despite
who is missing.
Because I am still here
to remember them.
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