Birthday Smiles
Lying beside you, smiling, naked in the darkness
And falling hopelessly, happily into your eyes,
Blissful in the scent and tangle of what has gone just before,
We're sated, full of love and tender mischief
Now that all the candles have been put to rest
And we lie together in the darkness,
After staying up playing Naked Gin Rummy
And laughing until 12:01 a.m.,
So I could wish you a proper happy birthday.
Now I carefully arrange my face
And muse that there must be something to all this astrology business after all,
Because I was reading a timeline on the Internet earlier,
Where you could look up what had happened in the sky
On the day you were born.
And exactly twenty-nine years ago today, apparently,
A brilliant shooting star streaked across the heavens,
Bright enough to cause comment and stir interest here on Earth,
Before a trick of light and atmosphere and angle
Made it seem to crash into the moon and disappear.
"Are you pulling my leg?"
"No, but I'm making this up."
"OK, I figured."
"But I have proof anyway."
Because you see, exactly twenty-nine years ago today,
A child was born, with deep blue eyes that shine with starlight,
From a radiant full-moon face,
Full of all the magic and mystery and mother-strength
Of Luna, her spirit's inspiration,
And full, also, of all the magic and mystery and fire-strength
Of a shooting star streaking across the heavens,
Certain to change the lives of those who rest on plainer ground.
Because you love me, you smile,
And because you love my tender darktime silliness
You smile again.
And I fall in love with you all over again,
Partly because the starlight *does* shine from your deep blue eyes,
And partly because you stir my soul just by lying beside me,
And partly because the endorphins you stirred a short time ago
still race through my body,
And partly because you're good enough to beat me at Naked Gin Rummy even when I tried to distract you,
And a whole lot because you smile at my silly ramblings,
And love me back.
Now it *is* your birthday, not just technically after midnight the night before, but really, with the sun up and everything.
And now you sleep gently in our bed, while I've crept up to make preparations . . . I'd wanted to write you something, and make you a card, and those need to be done before you wake up. So, even though there can be no better sensation than lying drifting beside you in the early morning, holding you in my arms and feeling the flesh of your shoulder against my cheek, this particular morning I'm up, and have things to do while you rest.
Because, after you wake up, I'm yours, all day today, for whatever you want, because after all it IS your birthday.
I will, though, have the sense not to use the power tools before full sunlight. So I suppose there will have to be a bit of time where I disappear into the attic, because I need to run the cables from the living room to the office and our bedroom, so that when the cable guy comes in a few hours we can have lightning-speed Internet access, and the TV in our bedroom can be put to better use than just holding up seventeen lit candles (more or less like every other flat surface in the room last night) while we make love. (In daylight, part of me wants to admit that all those candles were probably more responsible for the rise in temperature in our room, than were we ourselves, but I still like last night's hypothesis better.)
And also, in a little while, I need to bake a pineapple up-side-down cake, which means I need just now to find a good recipe online. While I'm looking, I can muse with a smile that you'd still have your mother's recipe handy if it weren't still miles and miles away at the house that was yours, where your sister now lives with her new husband (when he's not away at school), while you've come to me--to me!--where there is no old family recipe for pineapple up-side-down cake, but where there is someone who loves you and will get up early to find a new recipe for you, and who also had the sense to decide against calling long distance to wake your sister up to find it before morning had yawned and stretched and opened her eyes.
Later today, we'll go to all the Mexican markets you want, until we find just the perfect moca jeta like you want, or maybe a tortilla press, and we'll buy it and wrap it up for you and make you open it later . . . or should we just keep it out and use it to make supper, a special Mexican supper for my birthday-lady?
And then even later, our kids will go visiting, and we'll go exploring, and go to a grown-up movie with not one single animated character, where people are allowed to kiss onscreen and not giggle afterwards, and where I will slip my hand in yours and kiss you in the darkness, and just maybe giggle afterwards anyway. And, unless we decide to cook a special Mexican supper here, just the two of us, we'll go to any restaurant you want . . . maybe for the Mexican food you love, made by someone else, somewhere where I can practice my Spanish because the server doesn't speak English, and where your blue eyes are unique among all the laughing happy people who seem to know one another.
And tonight, after the kids are back home and tucked into bed, after they've wished you their own last sleepy happy birthdays, I want to make the end of your day as magical as its beginning. I want to make love to you by candlelight, to hold you in my arms and touch your soul, to see the stars shine again from your eyes, and not even notice when 11:59 changes to 12:00 and we've squeezed everything we possibly can from your perfect day.
It doesn't matter if the clock changes at midnight anyway. As far as I'm able, I want every day to be for you as magical and special as it can be, because I know in the depths of my soul that any minute shared with you is precious, a thing to savor, to treasure, to enjoy to the utmost of our ability. And another night we'll take Amanda and Gena up on their Trivial Pursuit challenge, and another day we'll go walk through the woods at the nature center, and we'll live life and laugh together until we're old and gray and busy falling in love yet again.
Magical nights and magical days are easy with you, Michelle, because you bring the magic with you, in your eyes, your heart, your soul. And for this and so many more reasons, I will always love you.
Happy birthday, my partner, my lover, my friend.
Return to the Library.
Return to the Front Door.
E-mail me at Weavre@graffiti.net