"Happy Birthday" by Lydia Gwyn

I read a poem that takes up half the book. There are boys crying in the cornfields of its pages. A

living will tucked into the stanzas of a woman’s bra. I need this poetry first thing in the morning

just as I need my coffee. Just as I need minerals and electrolytes and clean air. I write and write

and go wherever I’m supposed to go and hope I’m pushing beyond my threshold. But I’m not so

sure about that. I almost always go back to the same old things. Back to my brother who died as

a teen. Our childhood. Nap times when I couldn’t sleep and would talk to him, keeping us both

awake until our mother surrendered and told us to go ahead and get up. Sometimes my aunt is

there smoking a cigarette on the porch or drinking a Nescafe. Or I lean into the arms of my

husband, our arguments, our making up. And sometimes my children are there. Writing these

things is like chasing papers down a street. Untwisting either side of a peppermint. Gathering and

unwrapping. Making sense. I suppose my daily reading and writing is also like practicing an

instrument. I don't play music though I can read it. My father is a drummer. My mother plays the

piano and the flute and I married a man who plays guitar. When my husband takes up the fiddle,

I’m glad it’s not the harmonica. He scrapes out Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star and I listen from the

other room as he smooths his bow strokes, perfects his timing. My daughter auditions for her

school’s show choir with Happy Birthday and she gets in. I hear her warming up her voice in her

room, practicing the scales her teacher taught her. My husband learned Happy Birthday on the

fiddle too and played it for my father on his 72nd last year. As I write this little story, I realize

today is my father's 73rd birthday. Last night, in my dreams a man was playing the drums in an

apartment. He set up a tiny trap set with a high hat the size of a dessert plate and sat down on the

floor before it. He played mostly with his fingers instead of drumsticks. It sounded like the best

jazz. I called my brother into the room to listen. He was also a drummer when he was alive. I

remember how the day after he died, the music store called. The new-used trap set my father had

ordered him was ready to be picked up. When my dream brother entered the room and sat down

next to the dream drummer, he became my dream son. These days that's how it is. When I

dream, my brother becomes my son. And my son becomes my brother.

Lydia Gwyn is the author of the flash fiction collections: You'll Never Find Another (2021, Matter Press) and Tiny Doors (2018, Another New Calligraphy). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Best Microfictions 2024, F(r)iction, The Florida Review, and others. She lives with her family in East Tennessee and works as an instruction librarian at East Tennessee State University.