25

It takes nine months most of the times

Seven or eight, the casual exceptions

It took me longer to become a baby –

25 years past my baptism, to be more precise

The blow of candles every late February

Was actually a sigh.

Before I was born,

I was taught how to spell

My first word was sorry,

The second was please

Along came techniques in seducing my mother to stay

Such as good grades

As opposed to my nullity few inches away

My bad math worthy of bad echoes on my face.

Throughout your discontent with me

I grew a couple of mimetic ears

Which later came to name me Magdalene

And Forrest Gump, only with balder tits.

Too close to my angles to grasp what they add

The simple right dress concept

Me, a shape no language could ever define,

A shape every language would rather side-step

With utmost contempt.

You pinned a pair of invisible needles

In each end of my lips

So they could fake laughter whenever they itched

For all those whom you knew or not –

My scars, the price of it.

25 is a long, lonely time

When all you can pull is you

Purity lost in a divided sight,

My heritage –

Divorces in and out.

But as I buy myself a BlueAir ticket

You lure me to prattle and do the bear

While handing me tea and ruby earrings...

Cancer has now become a sign of affection

Virgo,

Pisces,

And Sagittarius, as well

All four of them chipping in for amnesia.

25 is a respectable fraction

A quarter century from left to right

Dismissed, and then back in line

Late virgin goes lousy lay

Lapsed Christian, lapsed suicidal,

Lapsed beautiful

Lapsed would-be-s, too

Misdiagnosed by turned on shrinks

Constantly trading love for its misconceptions

Devising a cycle of steps in and out of insomnia

And failing at everything just to confirm first impressions –

It only took the irreparable for you to awake.

Now that the check writes 25 years,

And 2-pennies change,

Not to mention hopeless disgust in milk,

I am the apple of your eye

The sweetest baby in the world, at last.