Because it’s Tradition, I am Troubled in My Heart

Frances Klein

Birthday candles forcefully kiss my cheeks. Frosting paints my eyes better than any natural-colored eyeshadow. Strawberry jam stands out more on my lips than the carrot orange lipstick I’m wearing. The only way I can eat cake is with a bruise on my forehead and my ponytail in his hand. Everyone is putting more effort into laughing right now than they were singing “Happy Birthday.” I’m almost glad I can’t open my eyes right now. If I could see through the salty Swiss meringue, I’d probably see a knife in my hand. Divorce papers on an ochre table. An IV drip stabbed into the back of my hand. A wedding ring surrounded by water rings on our coffee table. I see these images every year after my head breaches cake. I instinctively lick my lips and the images disappear with the smoke from the candles. I’m left staring at the shape of my head on top of the candles shaped like a four and a zero, all the while he chuckles and tells me I should have seen it coming.

A Girl Slides into My DMs Offering “Sweet GIFs or the Blood of Your Enemies”

Séamus Fey

I choose the former

She’s looked over my cookies. She knows how much reality TV I’ve consumed since 2000. I don’t know if she’s pleased with that or is silently judging me. Tiffany “New York” Pollard smiles with a knife in her hands. Mayhem Miller serves bulging eye choreography. That one girl from Bad Girl’s Club says, “Maybe so.” A chuckle falls out of me like crumbs onto my shirt. I open the GIF bar to find something fitting to give back. But then I realize I don’t know anything about her. I think we shared a class or worked together in the past. Her name eludes me. She sends me Tanya and Portia from The White Lotus sitting in silence when I don’t respond. I think she’s mad at me, but I don’t know how to ask.

I choose the latter

She gives me their last names. It was easy to remember their first names. How they squinted their eyes when they mocked my voice. But I couldn’t remember their full names in order to cyberstalk them. Not even the one who sent me a friend request years after he drove me out of Boy Scouts. I deleted it in response to his audacity, then never thought of him again. Until now. She probably wants me to feel some satisfaction for how my life turned out compared to theirs. Instead, I’m sitting with Tanya and Portia in Sicily, unsure of what to do next.