After the Party

Sugar dries on paper plates. The cake’s   

decimated and barely touched. What to do   

with the balloons? A few float listlessly,   

unattached, still bearing like bandages   

the tape that bore them to the wall.   

They’ve gone dull, rubber tips darkening   

to a bottle’s pinch. It’s too late, or too early.   

There are too many on the floor, stirred up   

as I stir. In the end, I cut them, urge a blade   

into the inch between knot and blossom.   

Slow deflation. It reveals what they are:   

sacs of plastic, stale with air. I’ve seen this   

before, in the newspaper picture of Nefertiti,   

bound in the antechamber of a tomb,   

cast out of favor, her body, barely wrapped.   

How they know her: by the queenly jaw,   

age of limbs and teeth. Also, by the broken   

mouth, smashed by priests so she cannot   

eat, cannot breathe in the afterlife.