Birthday Wishes

I'll never understand the sentiment-
June seems to me far crueller-a yellow
promise of summer that never comes.
It's not that I wish to seem ungrateful
I simply question this parade of gifts,
thoughtfully given, and ask what it is
we're celebrating? Each year I look down
at this fresh gut, with more blood on my
neck than before and wonder what I
did to warrant the attention? The coarse
hair is already breaking through my
skin again and the milk in the fridge
has started to turn, it made my cereal
taste of lemons-citrus is more my mother's
thing, not mine; even kettle chips can't
scratch the itch at the back of my throat.

This morning I showered with a fly and a
brown moth; the fat spider that sits in the
corner fell, weighed down by condensation,
into the bathtub and played dead at my feet
before drowning for real in the pool he'd created.
I guess I'll never understand the sentiment.