01 I look for my youth everywhere I go. I look for my ageing in my mother. I am six again, lost in the mall looking for my mother. I am six again, at kindergarten with a big cake shaped like a house but not a home.
02 Over the years, I’ve come to see growing older as some kind of self-ambush. Among my self-doubt and self-deprecation, there’s too much of the self. There’s too much of me.
03 I don’t know if wishing works, but I do know the act has to be partnered with blowing. I wish on candles and eyelashes and dandelions. I blow them away. I don’t know where they go. Maybe next year I will wish to find out.
04 I ask this, offering up my youth at the altar for an honest answer: Which shall I treasure more—the letter that was delivered upon request or the letter that was sealed with surprise? There is a right answer.
05 All I ever want for my birthday is a handwritten letter. What I will never ask for on my birthday is a handwritten letter.
06 There is just as much violence as there is grace in growing up. There is only grace in growing older.
07 But it’s not about growth; it’s about endurance. The earth kept spinning and my feet are still tethered to this here ground. Applause is welcome and encouraged. Flowers optional.
08 I think about the people who remember it is my birthday but due to pre-established social conventions do not try to contact me. My gratitude crawls out of the graves it is buried in.
09 Twenty-four is not my mid-twenties. I’m still in my early mid-twenties. I allow myself this polite lie and give Leonardo DiCaprio one last chance to reach out to me.
10 I have loved pink for twenty-four years now. I have never stopped wanting to encase myself in this color. If only I could dip my toes in it and let it paint me whole. Paint me whole. Can a color make me whole?
11 I feel twenty-four in my bones, engraved in its permanence, not just a tourist. I wonder if succeeding years will find themselves next to twenty-four or whether they might be embossed on my brain or carved into my eyelids or inked onto my heel.
12 My skin bruises more easily and the scabs fade less quickly. I ask my friend who is studying medicine why this might be and she lists the vitamins I might be deficient in. I take more vitamins than I do meals in a day.
13 I pray to be remembered. I pray to be an annual log in someone’s calendar. I pray for a collection of handwriting that doesn’t belong to me. God pretends not to hear me.
14 I wish I could feign nonchalance on my birthday. To unmark this date from its importance. But my existence and its endurance craves acknowledgment in the form of sugar and signed cards.
15 I’ve only ever met one person who has the same birthday as I do. I wonder if they remember me. I wonder if I’ll meet another. I don’t know that I want to meet another. To be born in the season of dying things is a sad thing. Still, we pretend to care.
16 Somebody refers to me as an adult but the word fits like a borrowed jacket two sizes too big. I tell myself I am still young then remember that some animals do not live this long.
17 Sometimes I think that I’d be happier if I were born as a bird or a deer. Then I remember men who hunt for sport.
18 I am closer to thirty than I am to eighteen. This discovery brings me equal parts dread and relief. When I was eighteen, I thought someone at twenty-four would be unshakeable with a place in this world. My hands tremble as they clap to the rhythm of Happy birthday.
19 And in service of what do I live these years? In service of science? Philosophy? Poetry? I doubt it is anything so grand. I live in service of waking up with my body intact and my words filtered.
20 I mourn who I will never be and marvel at the person I know I will become. The grief is lighter to carry.
21 I think about going home a lot. I don’t openly tell anyone this. I’m afraid someone will tell me to go home. I’m afraid I will go home. I’m afraid there is a better life back home than what I have built here. I’m afraid the candles burn brighter on a cake baked on the island on which I was born.
22 Each year, I take stock. What I gained: New books, freshly written pieces, friends who have stayed. What I discarded: Certainty, the illusion that I am endless.
23 I don’t want to speak of time as a predator. I want to speak of time as the weather.
24 It’s my birthday. I wait by the phone for my loneliness to dissipate. I wait by the phone. I wait for my loneliness. I wait to dissipate. I wait.
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