​I will hold my birthday wishes in abeyance
until my death day
and throw them all at once into the candlelight
and rising smoke

"The world doesn’t stop spinning
because it’s your birthday,"
my father once said after dinner
when I asked to be excused

But on my death day―
for the briefest flicker of flame―
this world will unspin
all my days and all I was

   and all I wished