Left Over
My two best friends become best friends at my birthday party
under the streamers trailing
under the deflated balloons, properly empty
of the words to say stop it! I’m the lonely one!
little sister sneaking a peek through the door crack.
Only two more hours for us to start having fun, warns the clock.
Like warm soda, shaken, rises the urge to clock you
for congregating by the ice cream cake in a party of two
while I am trying to start a board game, cracking
bad jokes for your attention only. Will I always be trailing
after the two of you like pin the tail on the donkey, alone
as I’m picking up the empty
handmade goodie bags discarded in the corner, empty
after the last person leaves. The hands point up on the clock
and it’s not my birthday anymore. Regular days have an aftertaste of loneliness.
I had a great time at your party,
both of you tell me later. I resign myself to trailing behind
when the sidewalk doesn’t fit three. Though I try not to fall through the cracks
in the pavement, my sneaker bumps the cranny anyway.
Two’s a party, three’s a crowd—I reserve a table in an empty restaurant
and neither of you can make it. The more we speak, the more I trail off
like sprinkle cake under a spray of water. I punch the clock:
I see one of you on Monday, the other on Friday. I keep each party
separate, each day of the week alone.
But hard as I try I cannot make either of you feel my kind of lonely.
Sandwiched between two pineapple-on-pizza lovers, cracking
my glowstick like a baton because you were supposed to attend this party for me.
I collect dirty plates and half-drunk cups of Dr. Pepper. I empty
the garbage can. I clock
the hours I spend wondering if either of you notice my trailing
as you talk about movies, god, money. The trail
we are talking on treads narrow. I stumble out onto the dried grass again, alone
again. Whenever we’re all together with the clock hands
all pointing up, you make me leave belonging at the door. Something broke in the crevices
when I said I take cheese on my pizza and don’t believe in reincarnation: my emptiness
cannot be created or destroyed. So I stop hosting birthday parties.
Yuliya Vayner graduated from Hunter College with a BA in Creative Writing and currently works at Simon & Schuster's Little Simon imprint. She has previously been published in two CUNY publications: the Olivetree Review and Stuck in the Library. She has poetry forthcoming in the 2022 issue of The Central Dissent. Yuliya lives in Brooklyn, which is the subject of much of her poetry.