Birthday in the Quiet Poem, by Friendship, at My poetic side

Birthday in the Quiet

I light a single candle,

its flame a thin confession—

it flickers, not because the night is dark,

but because the world has turned its back.

All the names I once whispered into the wind,

“you matter,” they said, like promises stitched

onto cheap envelopes.

I kept them in a drawer, soft as forgotten letters,

waiting for the day they’d be read aloud.

The clock strikes twelve, the calendar folds,

another year slips past—

a quiet that presses against the ribs,

a weight that no “happy birthday” can lift.

I hear the echo of laughter I never heard,

the phantom clink of glasses raised in my honor,

the phantom smiles of people who once claimed

they’d stand beside me, even when the road was cracked.

But here I sit, the cake untouched,

the frosting a pale moon in a sky of silence,

and the only wish I make is for the honesty

of an empty room that doesn’t pretend to be full.

In this solitude, I find a strange kinship

with the trees that shed their leaves without apology,

with the tide that rolls in, indifferent to the shore’s longing—

they do not ask to be remembered; they simply are.

So I blow out the candle, not to wish for cheers,

but to let the smoke rise like a quiet prayer:

may the love I chased be gentle enough to meet me

where I am, unadorned, unclaimed, and still breathing.

And perhaps tomorrow, when the world forgets its vows,

a single voice will rise, not from a crowd,

but from the part of me that already knows—

I am enough, even when no one says it.

Birthday in the Quiet