Fifty-Three
By: Loukia Borrell
West Texas Literary Review
2017
Republished in Cerasus Magazine, 2021
strange number candles on the rainbow cake
the five more frightening than the three
and I smiled, softly, never believing I
would get here, live this long, I made it
maybe forty more, who knew, I said and
the kids laughed as I blew them out,
thinking of a different birthday,
remembering myself at twenty
in the halter dress on the front porch,
cigarette dangling from my delicate
fingertips, Heineken bottle meeting
my cupid’s lips, and the boys and girls
who kept going through the porch door
that kept swinging open and closed
