Birthday Month

 

Flannery’s Birthday

by Angela Alaimo O’Donnell

“Well I thanks you for my birthday message.
I am thirty-five years old and still have all my teeth.”

—Flannery O’Connor, Letter to Betty Hester, April 2, 1960

Little did I know, I’d have just four more.
Birthdays never meant that much to me
until I stopped having them. Now they seem
a sweetness every humanoid should savor,
a day for cake and contrition for all
the things you done and didn’t get to 
and might not ever, given the call
we all get but really don’t expect to
out of this party we call life. The knife
I use to cut my cake is sharp. Like my
eye and my pen. My stories rife
with folks who need a light to see themselves by.
Maybe candlelight is best, a birthday song
reminding us all we won’t be here long. 

(83) Three Poems For Flannery O'Connor's 100th Birthday—Angela Alaimo O'Donnell