I WANT.....

These are the things that i want. 

Iwant to stand barefoot in the middle of a clear road in the rain, with water puddling on tree branches above me, and not care that my dress is sheer and wet and clings to my skin.


I want to write lines from famous love poems down you back, and drink wine straight from the box when we wake up to cold mornings, wiggling our toes in shaggy blankets.

i want to try to cook you eggs sunny side up but only managed scrambled, and walk through a mine-field of white and brown shells, and kiss you when you wake up naked and yawning.

i want to make love on a beach, on a pier, on a porch swing in a desert until we’re exhausted and sunburned and satisfied, oh so satisfied. i want to stand on a dirty subway platform with you, surrounded by graffiti that screams for freedom, with your fingers dancing inside my shirt and your stubble scraping the side of my neck.

i want to go to a seedy bar and order whiskey and vodka and gin. i want to dance so long that i start to sway and almost fall, and my feet ache and my stockings rip in small threads up the sides of my calves.

i want to rent a cheap apartment and fill the windows with gauzy curtains, and invite you in and smile until we can’t keep our hands off each other and end up biting and grabbing and kissing on the living room floor with the front door still wide open. i want to wear someone else’s shirts and chop all my hair off and wear dark, dramatic makeup and cat-eyed glasses.

i want to climb trees and smell flowers and wade in creeks and smile at the children in all the parks, and refuse to believe that the teenagers are as bad as everyone always says they are. i want to buy a pair of big, thick headphones that shut out the world, and then i want to record your voice - because you’re all i ever hear, anyway.

i want to get on an airplane and travel to somewhere where neither of us know the language, and we have to learn to say ‘where’s the bathroom,’ from smudged, folded newspapers. i want to eat strange fruits and thick cheese and drink murky water, and chip off all my bright-colored fingernail polish. i want to live in a room where the paint is peeling and the bed frame is made of brass and the windows face brick walls and trashcans.

i want to stay locked up in bed for days, until the roses you bring me are wilting, and i want to smoke even though i know it’s bad for me. i want to write letters, real letters, and postcards and email, and i want to seal my letters with red wax.

i want to walk away when you hold your hands out to me, smiling the shy, mildly thrilled smile that you save just for me. I want to shut the door quietly behind me, and think that there should probably be more noise and drama in a life falling apart. i want to wonder why it’s so easy to end something that had once felt so permanent.

i want to drink enough so that when i go to bed at night, i can remember what it felt like to be four or five, and tucked in bed in a world that didn’t exist twelve feet beyond the driveway, and feel safe and loved. i want to throw away all my tea and drink black coffee, black, like my soul, and straight vodka, because i don’t need any training wheels.

i want to spill ink from my pens on my cheap bedsheets, and give my teachers papers that are stained with pizza sauce and smell like daisies. i want to smile thirty times a day. i want to be the flame that keeps you warm, and blackens you from the inside out. i want to search for your name in a thousand phone books until i find you, the right you, and then i want to do whatever it takes.

i want to drive off with you into the night, without a word to my name. i want to play with your hair and watch your eyelids twitch until the sun comes up, and then just sit in the silence for a while, our legs still entangled. i want to love you, only you, for the rest of my life.

i want to wake up so early that it’s still dark outside, and paint the sunrise, and then go and play chess in the park with the old men and the homeless kids, and then come home and forget to get dressed and teach myself how to play the piano. i want to hug you and kiss you and hold you as we sit on a park bench and whisper ‘marry me marry me,’ over and over again.

i want to smile sixty times a day, and have a fake accent, and dance to strange techno music in our socks and slide across the floor. i want to have a boy, a boy whose hair i wouldn’t cut and would grow in long golden brown curls. i want you to sing him the songs that your parents listened to, and read to him from books that will make him question the world.

i want to live in a house with a big front porch, with mosaic tiles in the kitchen and finger-painted bathrooms, murals in the kitchen, and flowers everywhere. i want to tell my son about freedom of speech and diversity, acceptance and sexuality, and i want him to question society constantly and form his own opinions. i want you to help me when i get frustrated.

i want everyone to know that family doesn’t mean you have to be related, because that’s not what family is, and i want to live with my friends and my loves and everyone else in between. these people have become my family through all the hard times, and every year at Thanksgiving I’ll ask you to carve the turkey so that I can serve them all, and show them how much I love each and every person that’s made an imprint on my life.

i want to walk on the streets barefoot with heaps of bracelets on my wrists, and wear sunglasses in the morning when my eyes are dark and shadowed from crying in my sleep. i want to dance and twirl and forget everything while my babies play the pots and pans.

i want to watch old movies with you in our bed, and think that it shouldn’t be possible to feel so complete and loved and fulfilled and still be breathing. i want you to know that i love you, and that it’s not a choice if you can’t live without someone. i want to make my kids iced tea and chase them around the yard, and giggle and tickle them and tell them strange stories. i want to tell them to love themselves and the world and everything around them, and to nurture their bodies and their minds, and to celebrate every day of their lives.

these are the things that i want.