I felt good for most of the day, which was strange, because I'm usually very depressed on my birthday. The depression has kicked in in the last few hours, though, so I wrote this poem. God knows why I write such nostalgic, regretful, worn out words, like I'm dying or something, when I have such a bright future ahead of me.

Broken

i broke the pot yesterday;
it was an accident.

i left it lying so precariously
on a skinny shoulder of shelf,
much too close to where my hands
weave over the kitchen sink.

i scrubbed the children’s dishes
so hard i bled.
they always cake up
what could have been clean.
if i had half a mind,
i’d never wash dishes again.

the blood ran fast and red,
like the last streak of sunshine
before it's snagged by the horizon,
down the clean, white dishes
i had worked so hard to purify.

i didn’t even notice the pot.
the tacky slab of misshapen clay
i have been proud of since the day i made it,
in mrs. mcallister’s class in the fourth grade.

it fell into the sink,
and got red and wet.
it was broken.
shards clattered against the plates,
beneath my fingers.

i wept to the sound of the garbage disposal,
fierce, endless, and sterilizing.