Once a year, from a dated cry purple, from the ballooned, gifted, candle huff and puff, to an awakening about table wrappings boxed to now finger scrappings, about my young days in search for the ungiven gift, a suprise but once... From the dawn's dream of my sadness at the unwrapped toy I'm too old for, the tight shirt of an opal orange, or, a pillow wrapped in Christmas case... I will be born older, long retired now from the uterus house so smooth, scarred by the scorpion's sting, a button to my belly's bone burning from the candles thick with this angel food's icing. November 7, 1998