Happy birthday, Meera
Happy Birthday, Meera
I have been keeping things all year — the receipt from the lemon cake, the photo where my thumb covered the lens, the note you left on the kettle in February. This is all of it, stuck down in one place.
Meera · 29 today
Press play before you scroll
It came on while we were icing the cake at half one in the morning and you sang the wrong words with total confidence. I have not heard it since without laughing.
Where this starts
Last year the cake sank in the middle.
The oven timer had been broken since we moved in, so we guessed, and we guessed badly. The lemon sponge came out with a crater in the middle of it and there was nothing left in the cupboard to start again with.
So we ate it standing up, out of the tin, with two spoons, at one in the morning, under the hallway light that buzzes. You said it was the best birthday you had had in years and I assumed you were being kind about the cake.
You were not being kind about the cake. I worked that out months later. You meant the part where nobody had arranged anything, and there was nowhere else either of us was supposed to be.
The room, filled
- The blue one from last year stayed up until March.
- You named it. You will not admit that you named it.
- Nobody else laughs at the hallway light.
- You make the tea far too milky and I have stopped fighting it.
- You still have the receipt from the first meal we ate.
- Your mum rings at seven and sings it badly down the phone.
- You clap at films. In the cinema. Out loud.
- The good biscuits live in the wrong tin, on purpose.
- The 47, both of us on it, arguing about the window.
- Twenty-nine today, and none of it wasted.
Born on
cups of over-milked tea, roughly
Twenty-nine years, and I have been here for six of them.
This one did not sink.
Same recipe, same tin, timer finally replaced in January. Cut it and see what is inside.
Tap to cut it
The year you actually had
February was the hard part, and you did not mention it.
Forty applications went out and four came back, and three of those were no. You did not tell anyone how bad that month got. I only worked it out because you started doing the washing up at eleven at night, which is what you do instead of saying things.
Then April came, and the one you actually wanted said yes, and you were embarrassed about how pleased you were.
Please do not be. You carried an entire bad season without making it anybody else’s weather, and then you were gracious about the good news. Both of those are difficult. You did them in the same year, in the same flat, with the same broken timer.
The year, stuck down
Mostly badly taken. All of them kept.
Turn them over
I wrote on the back of these at the time, which I now realise was slightly odd of me.
Tap to turn
The fridge door
Tap one to read it
Pick one to keep
Four wishes, and you only get to take one, which is the whole difficulty with wishes.
Choose one. Only one opens.
One tin.
Two spoons.
A light that will not stop buzzing.
Best birthday either of us has had.
Raise something
To you, at twenty-nine.
- To the cake that sank, and the night it turned into.
- To February, which you carried on your own for far too long.
- To April, and the email you read four times over.
- To the hallway light, which is staying.
- To your mum, singing badly down the phone at seven in the morning.
- And to a year where the good things stop feeling borrowed.
What I actually wanted to say
I am not good at saying any of this at normal volume, so I spent three evenings sticking it into a page instead, which is either romantic or avoidance.
Here is the thing I keep coming back to. Last year we ate a collapsed cake out of a tin at one in the morning and you called it the best birthday you had had in years, and I spent months quietly deciding you were being polite. You were not. You meant that nothing had been arranged and nobody was performing and there was nowhere else to be.
I have thought about that a lot since. It is how you are about most things. You do not need the occasion to be big, you need it to be real, and you can tell the difference from across a room.
So I have not arranged anything enormous. There is a cake that did not sink, a timer that works, and this.
— all my love
A tin, two spoons,
a light that will not stop buzzing,
forty letters and four replies,
one April that finally said yes —
and you, twenty-nine,
still making the tea far too milky.
Happy birthday.
Happy birthday, Meera.
The cake is in the tin. Do not wait for a plate.
made across three evenings