Birthday Cake

Melancholy is an ailment,
As common as the cough.
Though we take our medicine,
It remains, tough,
Rooted in our deepest days.

I always wanted a simple cake,
With blue lettering and white frosting.
But for years
My parents bought a fruitcake
For my birthday.

I always wanted the white cake;
All the other children got white cake.
How I cursed my lot,
Fated as it was for fruitcake.

But I failed to see the fruitcake
For what it was -
For the color of my parents' minds,
For the memories, hard to find,
After the cakes, and everyone else,
Are gone.

Now in the days of no cake
I see what is at stake.
To water the tree of my days
Is the best medicine to take,
And to hope, from beneath its shady leaves,
To take, from the burden of years, a brief reprieve.