this infection

Where is the fanfare?
Where are the streamers, where
is the champagne
to announce to the world,
I am here?

It has not been that much of a
celebration this year.

I tell myself it's because only the
important people care,
that it's garish to display one's age.
My hair may be gray, but I still have
the same fresh skin that I
had at eighteen,

although I smoke.
(Someday, the years will catch up to
me. The day I stop getting hit for
ID is the day I act my age.)

If I am so grand, then I have to be known
and it hurts that I am not so large to the world.
I may be deluded in my importance, but today
was supposed to be about my name,
and it wasn't, and so I am mad.