Wind gusted in from the window. Chills tickle her neck and creep down her back. Her pores widen and tiny goose bumps crawl up onto her skin’s surface, a feeling so delicate (yet so distinct) she is certain weightless fairy are tap dancing on her. Her sunshine hued hair swishes over her shoulders as gusty air continues to circulate the room.

She watches her from a distance and keeps her glaring subtle. She is most beautiful, most innocent and most unaware. She could be a girl or she could be a woman depending on who is looking and what they are looking for. For if they are looking for a girl, it is a girl they will see. A kitten curled ball she fits easily in the chair. Her spindly limbs. Her lips pink and puckered and pursed like she is about to purr. Sunshine illuminates her stone cold blue eyes that people believe exist only in fairy tales. Who creates such beauty? Chance? Is it part of some master plan? She snaps out of her thoughts as wind gusts over her face.

The mother can’t believe how much a woman she has become. She chills as she wonders how fast sixteen years has gone just yesterday she dressed as a fairy princess twirling in the house in her golden gown. For a few moments she allowed herself to remember. She remembered holding freshly born body so close and the smell so fresh and unlike any fragrance to have graced this earth before. Soft golden curls flowing as if a gust of wind had blown through them just so. This moment was golden and one she wished she could capture forever, but today is the party and there was no more time for reminiscing. The universe continues to turn and time moves slowly ahead people were waiting for the cake and the candles were starting to drip into waxy puddles on the surface of the cake.

Wind gusted. Candle flames twirled. Cameras flashed. She could taste the vanilla butter cream icing with a hint of candle smoke and wax and all the memories of the past sixteen years mixed together to create a most delicious and decadent desert one that deserved to be enjoyed by her family and closest friends as they were the ones who not only baked the cake, but shared her life and created the memories that were now flashing before her. Sunshine through an open window reflected off her eyes and caused her to blink and refocus her thinking. She pushed her lips together and with a gust of air as light as fairies wings out went the candles.

With that the singing began. The cake felt moist, cold, spongy, homemade. Its imperfect edges and imperfect texture were perfect, they were perfect as they mirrored its makers and its owner and the world we live in. The cursive sixteen written on it in gold sparkly letters smeared easily as she swirled her fingers through it. Those sixteen-year-old fingers were immediately put into her mouth allowing the vanilla butter cream icing infused candle smoke and wax to drip down her throat leaving a slippery film on her tongue. That was the taste of birthdays. That was the taste of birthdays.

Cut the cake, people are waiting, it’s melting, your friends are hungry, they are waiting on you.

Her blue eyes reflected in the knife as the sun peaked in from the open window. With one firm swoop she pushed down and in went the knife, goodbye fifteen for now sixteen had formally arrived butter cream and all. Her lips curled into a frown. She had hoped sixteen would be different. Yet the taste was the same and so her thoughts of sixteen being different more fun more grown up faded in the sunlight and the gusts of wind blew in the icy realization it would simply be an extension of the life she knew.