Prompt: "A song that has a month of the year in its title"
Selected by Allison
"First of August"
Joan Shelley
Electric Ursa, 2014
My birthday. It's not quite the birthday anthem you'd expect. Certainly not from a Leo (less than six months til Leo season baybayyyyyy *airhorn*). But this lilting, pensive melody is quite reflective of my birthday experience. As a child, I was not a big birthday person. A late-summer birthday can be isolating when the majority of your friends are away at camp or on family vacations the first week of August. I grew to not expect much from my birthday. It's summer, it's hot, people are busy. I have only one birthday rule—I don't work. August 1st on a weekday means automatic PTO. No cake in the conference room, no "Happy Birthday" sung over Zoom. Maybe it's from never having school on my birthday; I got used to having no obligations. One day a year, I'm free. For my last birthday, which fell on a Tuesday, I went to the movies alone, ate a large bucket of popcorn in darkness, and cried to the ending of Barbie. Big Leo energy.
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