@ Stupot: Short but sweet, although maybe a bit too short. The encrypted birthday card was clever, and recycling a pool cue was something I didn't see coming. The dad's dedication to his son despite legal impediments is heart-warming, although the baggage that led to the restraining order is left unsaid which probably casts him in a better light than he deserves. The son's attachment to his father is genuine, though, so the story works (but I wonder what the son would have to say at his twelfth birthday, as this clandestine contact with his father was clearly not sustainable). I think the story could be both more nuanced and more impactful if it were fleshed out a bit more.
@Sinitrena: Short but... pungent? This was a depressing read, I'm not going to lie. I think the only positive was that the post-apocalyptic landscape is repurposed as a quasi-functional flower-bed. Otherwise we have nothing but environmental devistation, presumed extinction of the human race, and to top it all off abandonment by the gods. Oh yeah, and the flower is unhealthy and struggling against probably impossible odds, so... yeah, depressing. I will give credit for some tight poetry with a challenging ABAB rhyme and fairly consistent metre, and your word choice is evocative.
@Mandle: Short but... concave? You definitely have some creative repurposing here, although one wonders if the newly minted spoon would even know what it is supposed to be used for. Plus, why would a drug addict buy a new spoon? Plus, what drug bust evidence locker is in a bunker that could survive a nuclear armageddon? Plus, the starfish-handed aliens have their own problems with weapons of mass destruction and are unlikely to survive us by long. Plus, if they did, wouldn't an evidence locker be full of cooler stuff to display at a museum than a spoon?!? If we ever find an ancient Egyptian evidence locker the museums would go bonkers over that stuff, with the probable exception of dainty metallic scoops.... I liked the symmetry of the spoon being scanned over and over again over the eons, and the character of the spoon is unique if not well-fleshed out. I'm not sure the poetry angle was the best choice, however, as Clarice Sinitrena pipped your medium with better metre and cleaner rhymes.