Birthdays

Rebeca Ramirez

You sneak

fires

across the meadow

your veins


azure, alice

Birthdays

that part doesn’t stop—

twenty-five years today,

more tomorrow.


It’s insufficient

but without it


would be insufficient too,

now the nightshade’s

shoring up/impassable

              smells heavenly

but can’t find it—

Dusk


never loud enough