12-29

Today is my birthday and I am furious.

Furious that I’m still here, still breathing, still dragging myself through another year

while the two people who made me—

the ones whose blood built my bones—

are gone.

There’s a rage in that kind of loneliness.

A rage that no one warns you about.

A rage that comes from being the last living witness

to the moment your story began.

Everyone else gets to pretend birthdays are sweet.

Cake. Candles. Wishes.

But I’m standing in the wreckage of a lineage

that no longer exists in human form.

I’m the only one left who remembers the sound of their voices,

the shape of their hands,

the way they said my name.

And I hate it.

I hate that they’re not here.

I hate that I’m expected to celebrate.

I hate that the world keeps spinning like nothing happened.

I hate that I’m supposed to be grateful for another year

when the people who gave me my first one

aren’t here to see any of it.

It feels like being abandoned by the universe itself.

Like being handed a life and then told,

“Good luck carrying all of this alone.”

And I’m angry because I am carrying it alone.

I’m angry because I shouldn’t have to.

I’m angry because grief has no mercy,

and birthdays sharpen every edge.

But beneath the anger—

beneath the heat and the ache and the sharpness—

there is a quieter truth.

I miss them.

I miss them in a way that has no language.

I miss them in the way a body misses a limb

that was taken long ago

but still aches on cold mornings.

Today is my birthday,

and I feel the outline of their absence

like a shadow I can’t step out of.

But I also feel the parts of them that stayed.

The way my face echoes theirs.

The way my laugh carries their rhythm.

The way my hands move like theirs did

when I’m creating, shaping, surviving.

I am alone today, yes—

but I am not untethered.

I am the continuation of two stories

that ended too soon.

I am the living proof

that they were here.

And maybe that’s the softest truth of all:

that even in this loneliness,

I am not a void.

I am a lineage.

I am a memory with a heartbeat.

I am a birthday they once celebrated.

I am a life they began

that still refuses to stop growing.