A birthday cake of creeping silence
crawled toward Eric with its frostbite
icing biting at him. These kind of kind of gifts
Keep being born and wrapping all around me,

Eric thought. Eric tumbled in a tussle with
the frosted sheets. He got up, and when
he’d gotten up, he had always been up.
The bed leaned like a tower of loose cake.

Eric was pretty sure the back-side of it
had all been eaten and was gone
already, but it turned with him while he walked
Around it, so he could not know could not catch

Up. A birthday cake of creeping silence
crawled toward Eric while he
circled it, like a wary groom. Did he want to
Marry cake, and grow up to be

Big, big, big? And maybe it was only
an empty shell, half-shell, of cake
sprinkled with miserable soot-powder
From the industrial processes that cored it