You don’t do birthdays anymore,
Your boys’ perhaps but not your own,
Greetings cards dwindling to none.
Not that you ever did, truly,
Childhood balloons and teenage beers
And dazed maunderings of latter years
Sorrow glooping from you
As marrow from bone.
Be still for a moment
And think of all those days spent.
How last year you took yourself
To the jeweller and had them remove it
After noticing she’d stopped wearing hers.
Took it home in a little square
Envelope. Stared at the crease
On your finger. Spent hours writing
And rewriting the same poem.
Until you got it right.
Until you could feel it.
Until you could say it was no longer there.