HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!

Birthday.

Birth-day.

Birth. Day.

Day of birth.

Day of becoming.

Day of growth.

Day of endings.

A day of death.

A day of closing one door ; Opening the next.

That old you is dead now.

They don’t exist anymore.

Shed and discarded.

A thin papery husk.

Whisked away in the softest breeze.

Congratulations!

You have another ghost.

You survived another year!

You didn’t die!

But the sand continues to fall.

Sand rising. Suffocating. Choking.

The jar becomes crowded and stuffy;

Hot and humid.

Discarded.

Forgotten.

Your collection continues to grow.

One day it will overflow.

A single hairline fracture.

Weakening the the integrity.

You keep stuffing more ghosts in the jar.

You ignore the problem.

You add another ghost as each new year passes.

The jar cracks a bit more.

Disguising this death as a celebration.

At 93 ghosts.

The.

Jar.

Shatters.