On my birthday,
I will take my tea
under the branches
of a dying cherry tree.
It has its scars, like I do,
raw and still exposed.

Ants have worried their way into the crevasses
and I know those wounds will not close.

But I see the buds
of the promised pink
that swirls around me
at the end of every April,
even though many of the branches
will never bear a bloom again.

It is enough that some of its branches will still flower.
It is enough that I still take up my pen.