The Fifth Anniversary
After the guests leave and taillights fade, the unspoken hostility stays in the room, grown too
large for the two of us. You insisted on the fifth-anniversary party for your co-workers, then
grumbled at the too-spicy wings I’d ordered, the too-colorful balloons I’d taped to the walls, said
it wasn’t a child’s birthday. The child I can’t give you. Now, I hold a triangular piece of cake
with a sputtering candle on a plate between us—half of a strawberry, a ring of kiwi atop the
cream and sponge. Not a curve on your lips, not a flicker in your eyes, despite the candle. I pick
the strawberry off the cake and bring it to your taut lips—an attempt at resigned reconciliation.
You gaze into my eyes and take the fruit in, then, lick my thumb and finger hanging in the air
front of your face. Lips bridge the physical distance between us, the strawberry sweetness rolling
between our tongues, quenching an unspoken thirst. Desire, buried for long, flows from cheek to
cheek, chin to chin, neck to neck. Hands reach and rove, deflecting the specter of scathing
childlessness, domestic disagreements, and dissonance of personal choices. A fire flares in the
follicles, our bodies dissolve into the couch, the leather cold against sweltering skins. A red
balloon from the wall behind drops between us. I push it to the floor, it rises back up. I slide it
under the couch. Can’t risk anything popping between us. Not now.
Heres’ the link to the story in South Florida Poetry Journal.
