Ode To Party Ruiners

teach us how to wish by their example

This is a poem that was rejected as part of a manuscript.

Ode To Party Ruiners

After cake had been eaten and presents were opened,
when the shiny new things stopped being as shiny,
I wanted my friends and I to perform for our parents,
had assigned parts and handed out scripts until

you took over, announced the parents would perform
for us instead. I didn't understand what you were
saving me from, how I could read a language my friends
couldn't yet and you didn't know how to tell me.

When I wanted a DJ to play at my party, you hired
a woman who brought her daughter along. I wanted to be
alone with my friends, you wanted to give me music.
She wanted to give her daughter a place to dance.

Bless the mothers who ruin the party, who steal
the scripts and scratch the records, who blow out the candles
for us before we are old enough to know that they burn.
Bless the mothers who teach us how to wish by their example.