When it is your birthday

We will celebrate.

There will be cold champagne and salty cashews and spicy chocolates and creamy white peach sorbet. There will be guests, friends. Maybe a tiara.

I will give you my gift last.

It will be wrapped in silver paper, reflections. It will be tied with silk ribbon, transparencies.

You will open it, carefully. You will enjoy wondering what is inside.

It will be a key. Heavy, hand-carved, swirls on this skeleton. Art on the bow, math on the bit. You will hold it and wonder what compartments it opens.

Like the one key Bluebeard forbids us to use, it will open a bleeding lock. The bleeding lock to a wooden door, black with time and secrets. But unlike Bluebeard's women, you have permission to use it. I've given it to you, it is your gift.

When you are ready, you will use it to open that dark door. You will not be scared, you're used to the sight of blood.

You will never forget seeing for the first time. Understanding that you haven't opened a door in, but a door out. And the lock that bleeds? It has been seeping in all these years, death on the other side, you thought. Now you know, it was keeping you alive. The death was on this side.

You will take your first walk outside. Transfused. Alive.