Mandatory Birthday Hats

I want wearing birthday hats
to be mandatory,
like wearing seat belts in the car.
I'd like a world
where shiny, pointy party hats
could be spotted in traffic, at stores, at work,
bringing the person beneath it into focus,
letting us share their secret
that today,
on this very day,
they came into this world,
helpless and new like the rest of us,
and if they were lucky,
loved.

We'd notice them, we'd see them,
we'd recognise
a human being,
with a mother, for sure,
and a father too,
who had great, great grandparents
who would have loved to have seen them
in their pointy party hat,
who would have loved to have seen them
at all.

A human whose lineage stretches back
past the cavemen,
who once learned to walk on wobbly legs
and the word for butterfly.
A human who rubs sleep out of their eyes
whose stomach rumbles and whose heart beats fast,
who is having a birthday in a life
that is always short
whether it lasts for two years
or a hundred and twelve,
because birthdays, like all days,
are numbered.

That’s why we ought to notice
the man in the car,
the boy at the bus stop,
the woman ahead at the check-out,
the little girl holding her father's hand.
People with plans, socks, hair, heartbreak,
kidneys, ticket stubs and cousins.
People who have birthdays,
and whose hats,
I think,
should
remind us.