How I'd like to spend the rest of my days:

Paris. We live on the fifth floor of an old apartment building. A ceiling that’s crumbling in places and wooden floors. There isn’t much furniture. A table and three chairs in the kitchen. One ancient velvet couch. End tables. A writing desk. One floor lamp. A coffee table. Some crates. The only lavish piece is the bed. The only extravagance the hundreds of books stacked along walls. (Comme est seulement juste.) It’s early. I’m sitting on the window ledge looking over the park across the street. Cool air brushes through the thin fabric of the oversized dress shirt I wear. I have a notepad in hand. Or maybe I’m reading. Or sketching. Nothing serious. He is the true artist. A writer. Letting me read his work since the third time we met. He sits at his desk, typewriter alive beneath his long fingers. A little crooked. Never clumsy. The click of the typewriter mingles with the small voices drifting through the open window. He pauses to take a sip of his coffee. I look over, watch him take off his glasses and rub his eyes. He looks up at me. Green eyes fringed by black lashes blinking into focus. A light smile smoothes his thick brow. He stands. Goes to the tiny kitchen. Pours orange juice into a wine glass. Crosses the room. Hands the glass to me. Kisses the crown of my head. I put my things on the floor. Make room for him on the ledge. His hand on my thigh. My fingers lightly touching the inside of his wrist. Happy to sit quietly together in the slow morning hours.

fate. terrifies. me.

It’s incredible how essential timing is in daily life. Maybe it’s part of fate—if there is such a thing. This concept of fate is unsettling. How many times do we miss someone by a half hour? by thirteen seconds? Is it coincidence that we end up in the same location as those people we meet on a daily basis? How many times do those strangers become something much more? Coincidences or fate, these happenings are incomprehensible. And brilliant. Tragic, too—the stark difference between meeting and missing.

I relearned you in a dream.

My subconscious takes me down every path that leads me to you. Subconsciously, of course. It’s on my side. You and I were on the same side. In the metro car traveling beneath D.C. On the bench resting in the Roanoke mall. Laying in the Gladys roads after dark. My town, not yours. Now you tell me you’ll be coming to the place where I live. Not coming for me. But you’d always call for me. We talked about baby names late at night. On the phone for hundreds of minutes. All for fun. Playing pretend that was always a little real. My reality now: you aren’t within my vision. I want to see through the eyes of the people who surround you. I want to see you. I want to look and look and look and look. And look. Doesn’t matter that I have you memorized already. Thick eyebrows. The freckles in your green eyes. The way you’re proud of your full eyelashes when they stick together in the corners. The white flesh between your thumb and index finger in otherwise tanned skin. The veins in your wrists. Your slim fingers. The way you were proud of taking my hand as we were crossing the street, leaving the carnival. You’d tell me I’m being silly. I’d tell you I loved you for a long time.

Stop. Go.

There’s something amazingly compelling about limits. Knowing you have to stop—doesn’t that ever make you fight harder? Do you ever want to see how far you’ll go before you reach breaking point? I think it’s the thrill of not knowing. And the fear. I’m terrified of not knowing what is enough. It’s like that game girls and boys play. A girl sits beside a boy and he puts his hand on her leg. He starts at the knee. Slowly, he inches his hand upward. He keeps going. She doesn’t resist. His hands are steadily making their way up. She squirms out of the way just before he reaches that unspeakable bit of thigh. And there’s the limit. Sometimes I am the girl who does not move a muscle. I do not flinch when that roaming hand nears the upper thigh. It’s not for the gratification of that stupid boy. It’s for me. I will always dare myself to go beyond my limits. I shouldn’t. But I can’t help it. I don’t want to be afraid of not doing enough or not being enough.

concept > reality.

I often like the idea of a thing more than the thing itself. I fall in and out of love with concepts every day.

no breathing.

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This is how long I held my breath while pushing the x key.
Gotta work on that lung capacity.

broken bones.

Do you remember when you broke your collar bone? We gathered our things and went to the hospital at the most normal pace. Unhurried. We drove the speed limit the whole way. Maddening. In the seat next to me, you were so small. The veins in your neck fed blue pallor into the rest of your skin. Your lips were the lightest possible shade of pink. You said you were cold. But I watched the sweat roll down your forehead, follow the line of your brow, and drip into your eyes; collecting in the thick clumps of your lashes. You were as still as I’d ever seen you. I talked. I joked. I tried to be gentle when I poured water into your mouth. We hit a pot hole in the same moment and I spilled it over your face. Sweat and water mixed and gave you the shakes. I couldn’t stop looking at you. Do you remember how small you were? I worried the sharp bone would poke through the skin at your neck, making a deadly incision. Blood and sweat and water mixed. But the bone remained rooted in place. Your skin stayed clean, intact. Blue and purple blotches formed around the swelling beneath that smooth skin. And you sat so calm with that broken bone. And I was so frantic with my broken heart to match.