Buttercream

Here’s balloons. They’re colorful, with fat bulging bellies, curled strings. Three of them lay pricked and deflated on the rug.

Here’s cake. Everywhere. Vanilla pound, buttercream, smeared on the table, splattered on the wall like fireworks. Cursive jelly letters shout: “Happ-“ then die away.

Here’s presents. Unopened, boxed up packages smothered by bows, frills, glitter. They sit on the bureau like dejected, lost puppies, ready at any given moment to leap up onto their feet and wave their lids and beg to be opened.

The party favors, the little bags of candy and toys tied neatly by his mother, are gone.

Upstairs in his room the dumptrucks and fire engines are strewn across the floor, like somebody came with a swiping, angry hand and chopped the air sideways to destroy their balance. The bed is unmade, purposefully, the blankets bunched up and half the pillows sagging by the window, where he’s lying, crying like nothing in the world is ever fair.

Downstairs in the kitchen there are uneaten snacks – pretzels, chips. Bottles of soda that haven’t fizzed up because the caps are still locked on, tight. Paper plates stacked, still in the plastic wrapping, holding up napkins that joyfully shout: “Happy Birthday!”

Here’s candles, the tips seared, the wicks black, the bottoms encased with vanilla pound and buttercream.

Everything still, in the rooms that were filled with bright laughing children just hours before.

The baby sits in her highchair by the table. His birthday card lays torn and skewered in her fist.