Year after year, when the candles burn bright, they carry the same question.
“What would you wish for?”
I smile, but my lips stay sealed. The words gather in my chest, pressing softly against my ribs, while the smoke curls upward as if it knows where to go better than I do.
Their voices fill the room before I can find my own. Their wishes are easy, light enough to float the moment they are spoken, already disappearing above the cake.
I press my hands to my chest, feeling my heartbeat, and everything I have learned to keep folded in silence.
I wait for the birthday ritual. Not for gifts. Not for celebration. The cake sits in the center.
Frosting and vanilla drift through the air. A soft hiss rises from trembling wax as the flames flicker like they are listening.
The ghost of my own pleas whispers in my ear.
“Close your eyes and give your deepest desire to the flames.”
They expect my wishes to be light, soft, and bright—a toy, a dress, a sparkle.
Something that fits neatly into celebration. If only longing were ever that simple.
But a woman’s wish is too heavy for the candles to hold, too sharp for a gift wrap to fold.
Still, I long for a simple life, one where I do not feel like I have to ask permission just to want something for myself. Where I do not have to shrink my voice or soften my wishes just to be taken lightly. But I still close my eyes anyway, like what is freely given to others is still something I have to prove and earn before it can be mine.
I lean close to the flames and let my words rise with the smoke.
Year after year, the candles multiply, more light pressing on the cake, but it does not feel
brighter. Wax falls quicker, flames weaken faster, and the room moves on before the
smoke even finishes rising.
I watch it thin out, as if it is giving up before I do. Yet in that last flicker of the wick, I hold
on to hope.
So that when candles die, I still keep wishing, not for myself anymore—but so the next
girl will not have to.
