There Are 11 Days Left Until My Twenty-Third Birthday

Laurel Green

and he asks me for the ninth time what I want. All I tell him are things that are really impractical. Seven thousand jelly beans. A ten day cruise to fourteen different places.

“You know, you’ve got to give other people something to do. I have to get you a present. I’m supposed to be good to you. It’s my right.”

We’re lying in a bed which is actually just a mattress on his cold floor. A dozen Faberge Eggs. 153.6 meters of red yarn. I stick my feet out from under the blankets and pull on a second pair of socks. 4000 drum sticks.

He can’t afford to fix the furnace and so we sleep underneath four blankets. I wear three shirts. He wears two sweaters and one toque that will fall off onto his pillow halfway through the night.