Birthday

BIRTHDAY / Marjorie Sinclair I told her she was elegant but it was a lie, I'm not sure why the words came except the smear of blue across her eyelids, gray coming into her hair, a tiny gold necklace— all these made me sad. Besides it was her birthday. A woman should look lovely on her birthday, if that's what she wants. I wasn't sure about her. She lives mostly in anger. It wells up, seethes in her like a hot September day boiling toward a dazed ending— her birthday in September. She is magnificent in anger, her hair black fire, her eyes blue crevices fiercer than any blade. She loves hate with a passion— the rush of life in her. She doesn't know this. She says she doesn't know what she loves or whom. But anger possesses her like any lover. 28 · The Missouri Review ...