What I Want

I used to write as if it were going to save my life. As if the right sentence could untangle what I had gotten myself into. As if I could light the torch and lead myself out from the woods. Perhaps, I did exactly that. I look back on the work as I am working and I am no longer her. Would she be proud of who I have slipped into, simple and calm as the low tide? Would she wonder where the fire went?

There has to be some kind of island in which we find ourselves not lost, no longer looking, and enjoying the view. It feels to simple a thing though, and I know we are not finished, rather just between something and someone else. So instead, I wonder what the man snorkeling out front is looking for, what the student is asking of me, what the woman on the corner wants when she gets home.

What I want to say is I am tired of waiting and I would like to be shaken up again by something else. What I would like to say is leave me alone for a little while longer while I enjoy this. What I want to know is what exactly do you think when you think of me at three in the morning?

Sometimes the birds get so close to the water I wonder at how they do no catch their wings on it.

One might think creating a new life is the most interesting thing I could do, but why then do I feel so simple, and why is simple not something I covet?

I say all of this because as I am editing my book I sense a kind of feverish desperation in the work that I cannot seem to find again. And perhaps that is alright. Perhaps for now, my life does not need saving. What I arrive at every morning is the solemn truth that there will never be enough time to read or see or be all of things I want in this life. That and the coffee goes cold, the tide goes out, and the summer always ends. And what I mean by this is that I want everything to me more and that in the wanting, it does.