LOVER

Happy Happy Happy Anniversary!

feels like 107 (narcissism)

This morning I am a nurse, crisply attired, briskly heading for the hospital. My hands are never happier than when trading my brown-bagged lunch back and forth, bypassing the bus stop and all its noisy gasses, uphill walking, my whites sweated through a bit.

In tha bag is my sandwich, turkey on sourdough with loads of Zatarain's mustard, another bag with pretzels in it, and two ripe nectarines.

My name is Selma Washington, my ankles are a touch swollen, the part of town I live in is pretty safe, and I think this weekend I'm going to take some burgers over to Leslie's and grill them up whether she wants me to or not.

What I Found Out

A silver birch-barked tree shimmering with copper pennies, not leaves. Each breeze turns the tree into a fantastical operatic dream. On the banks of a lake, umber, cool, still, gently lapping. Clouds in the sky, diffuse light, or thousands of clouds pouring across a cerulean sky. Crisp but not cold, only not hot. This is what would grow if I planted my heart.

Two boys with guitars in soft cases strapped to their backs jump off the bed of a pickup on a jammed waterside metropolis street, big choppy ocean water at the bottom of the hill ... Manhatten of olden days, days of my ancestors, newspaper boys, and immigrants ... or Shanghai? And I watch saying out loud, "I want that feeling of adventure. That is what life's all about."