We blow the candles anyway.

Chocolate cake. We don’t eat.

We kiss the child three times.

No place is safe. The forecast says

a chance of bombs: Stars

so pensive. No fish or ships

in the sea. This city is

crushed crisps in a fist.

The sea knows the city until

the city no longer knows itself.

May you live to be one hundred.

There’s a future though we cannot

see our hands under water.

Anyway, we wash our blue towels.