i want...

i want art in the bathroom.

fresh flowers on fridays.

i want to light a birthday candle every morning just for that-smell-right-after-it's-been-blown-out.

i want the popped collar.

i want a lifetime of the-hand-on-the-thigh-in-that-way-that-doesn't-usually-survive-marriage.*

i want to be your two am secret. that little intake of air that rocks behind the lips like a horse at the start of a race.

i want the man who after hearing the whole of my story will ask, unprompted, what parts of your body did you hate the most? and then love them all the more.

i want to go to the beach. right now, i want to go. in the middle of this new york winter.

and i want to wear a bathing suit--a small one. just to attract the attention, just to feel those storied and much-talked-about long and withering glances. i want to lose days to the ocean. for the blue of the water to stain me, to wash me, to wrinkle and make a prune of me, and remind me that i'm deliciously human and capable of floating.

i want to make up for lost time.

and i want and i want and i want.

*inspired  by a phrase written by the inestimable anna  quindlen

what the aftermath of a night of insomnia looks like...

this is such a particular time in my life. strange and a little lonely and such that when sleep finally pulls me under around 4:30 the sheets are wrinkled and i'm on my side of the bed, an open jar of peanut butter on the other. it won't always be like this, and i'm sure i'll miss those kinds of nights when they've morphed and gone altogether.

how i take care of myself...

(as inspired by the ridiculously talented Warsan Shire).

i totally would

 

not terribly long ago--but just enough ago--i sat with a man at a bar.

i made him come to me. that's the thing about carroll gardens, now i make the men come here.

we sat and chatted and i felt lonely next to him.

carroll gardens is too quiet for me, he said. i could never live here.

good, we don't want you, was all i could think.

i'll take the quiet and i'll take carroll gardens. no need for you. i say now that the man will have to come and drag me from this place. me with my heels dug in, me so in love with this sleepy corner of brooklyn with it's superior food and late-afternoon-glow.

when my dark secret is that i'd chase the-right-one down to the ends of the earth. and when he asked me to leap from the flat edge of this world... i totally would.

On what to give up for Lent...

last night i found myself at a small downtown club listening to some really fine new orleans tunes--dueling trumpets, rich and broken voices. organized, beautiful chaos.

and there was a moment when la cucaracha came spitting out of one of the horns and i had this very clear memory of how as i child my father would pull me from the shower and towel me off as he sang that ridiculous song. and i'd forgotten. and how could i forget that? and what other memories have too long sat on a shelf somewhere?

standing in the too crowded space just before the stage i turned to this lovely man who i'm just now friends with--this person who barely knows me--and i said, if this tuesday is already fat tuesday then i must think of something to give up for lent immediately.

and before the words were even out of my mouth, he looked right at me and said, how about self-doubt? 

and god how that question literally took the air from my body. few times in my life have such simple and elegant and wholly true things been said. and he barely knows me. and so how did he know that?

i thought i'd gotten good at faking it, you know?

i felt so exposed in that moment. so seen and not, all at once.

self-doubt.

how about self-doubt? divinity mostly arrives in unusual forms.