Birthday


We woke up before dawn. It was the last
day of sixteenhood. We remember it clearly.

Putting on our coats, we went from the bedroom
to the living room, the snow outside was pale blue.

From the television came the distant calls of swans. Even though long
forgotten, the darkness inside our eyelids still lingered in our vision.

Not every day is a birthday. And everything
that happened in this room will remain in these slippers.

For all of this, we both sigh and secretly
harbor hope. In the waking dream, our house was repaired, as if the forgotten

home of childhood. We held up
binoculars to examine it, and through them we saw the

pitch-black forest, the snow of towns we'd never met. Sliding
down from the high hillside in one breath.