Sugar dries on paper plates. The cake's
decimated and barely touched. What to do
with the balloons? A few float listlessly,
unattached, still bearing like bandages
the tape that bore them to the wall.
They've gone dull, rubber tips darkening
to a bottle's pinch. It's too late, or too early.
There are too many on the floor, stirred up
as I stir. In the end, I cut them, urge a blade
into the inch between knot and blossom.
Slow deflation. It reveals what they are:
sacs of plastic, stale with air. I've seen this
before, in the newspaper picture of Nefertiti,
bound in the antechamber of a tomb,
cast out of favor, her body, barely wrapped.
How they know her: by the queenly jaw,
age of limbs and teeth. Also, by the broken
mouth, smashed by priests so she cannot
eat, cannot breathe in the afterlife.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem