there are days when i think i've made every possible wrong turn.

when i can sense my parent's growing frustration with my in-between-es.

when i imagine living anywhere other than new york.

but as the night closes in and i find myself with a good book, i think, i could be anywhere else in the world: paris, salzburg, new south whales. i could be lying in bed next to a man. the man. home from the corporate office in which i've found professional success. and yet i'd still be having the same experience.

just me and the story. and no city, no person, no job would change that.

and so for those few minutes before sleep, those few minutes enveloped in a book, there is no reason to fret, no reason to fear, for life is just as it should--just as it always will be.