She’s weird and unusual and she’s my fairy godmother, she comes with gifts and she says, blow out the candles, kid, like she doesn’t understand that I’m already a grown woman. Then she takes me out and pretends she doesn’t know that I’m too sad for parties, and she sings about how Girls Just Want to Have Fun, because she’s here to remind me that fun is fun is fun, like roses. She takes me to wonderful places, places dripping wonder, big cluttered rooms, crowded buzzing cities, forests with tall trees and overstuffed closets, because she trusts wonder and life and the universe too much, she trusts chaos and hates how people fight it, how people embrace order and try to fix broken because order is boring and sterile, and I trust her but I hate how the world fails me and when chaos takes over, things crumble and decay instead of blooming, I hate how entropy destroys whatever I cherish. She comes and dresses me up, she comes Time After Time, she pats my back and confesses that she meant loss after loss but the words didn’t rhyme, she sees my confusion and the sadness, and she understands me when I tell her that I’ve lost too much, but then she laughs like I’m joking, because she knows and I know that loss comes with love and it’s part of the game. She comes and she sings and she doesn’t look through me, she sees my True Colors, then she moves her magical wand and begs me to show her a smile, she asks, have you shown them, and I ask, what, and she rolls her eyes, like she knows darkness but she knows rainbows too. Before she leaves she has a piece of the cake and she shines in colors so bright that she blinds me, and I kiss her goodbye and I thank her. She grants me a wish because she sees my sadness and she understands cluttered and complicated and all things human and wondrous, but she won’t let me sink, and before she disappears my wish is already granted when she reminds me of how it felt when I Drove All Night for love and how, loss after loss, still, it was all worth it.