Two Cakes

One, with a soft sugar flower in the center; the other, topped with a fort 
of strawberries and piped cream. When she bends to blow out the birthday
candles, you can see the bow formed by her shoulder bones, notched at
the center where they meet under thinned flaps of skin. In the room, 
as in a fairy tale, people clapping their hands and singing in a circle. 
Even the sound they make is fragile and breakable. On the recording 
that someone has made, the aura around every figure is blue as smoke. 

These are not the fates,
yet they bristle with their own
premonitory power.