Cake for an Absent Chair
Original EveryPoem Studio house-voice poem.
We still buy the cake you chose,
though nobody wants the corner piece now.
Your birthday arrives without permission.
The calendar does not apologize.
We light one candle,
not because we know where wishes go,
but because memory needs a small action.
Then someone tells your old joke.
For one breath, grief and laughter
sit at the same table.
59 words · 10 lines · Free Verse