I hate my bithday
I hate my birthday
because attention feels like a spotlight
dragged across a crime scene.
For one day,
everyone looks at me too long.
Their voices soften,
their messages multiply,
Their hands reach for me
like they suddenly remembered
I exist.
And maybe that’s what ruins it.
Because the attention never feels real—
it feels seasonal.
Obligatory.
Like love with a reminder notification attached.
People sing my name
while I stand there wondering
how invisible I must be
the other three hounded and sixty-four days
for this one to feel so unbearably loud.
I watch their faces stretch across the room
and I swear
I can hear the preformance in them.
The way everyone suddenly needs me
to be happy
Greatful.
Easy to celebrate.
But birthdays have always felt less like celebrations
and more like evaluations.
Another year gone.
Another version of myself
I failed to become.
The candles don’t look warm to me anymore—
they look like little countdowns.
Tiny fires marking the distance
between who I am
and who I said I’d be by now.
And when everyone stares
waiting for me to make a wish,
all Incan think about
is how exhausting it is
to be perceived by it all
Because being seen for one day
only reminds me
how forgotten I feel the rest of the year.
So I blow out the candles quickly,
before anyone notices
that the smoke rising from then
looks too much
like relief.
A