25th birthday

I go to

The-cards-for-pariahs section

Away from all the other

Greeting card confections it is

lightly and surreptitiously attended, although I myself come here often

Oddly situated on a half-aisle between

plumbing and luggage

The cards here are all in shades of ocre

Sometimes the clip art is unbearable, smudged, or just incomprehensible scribbles…macaroni mosaics where all the pasta is long-gone,

All’s that’s left: glue ghosts,

No words left to signify anything but metaphysically inky

Noon-to-3

Darkness