Tickle on Your Neck

With the sounds of accented English coming from the family room, she stretches across her bed, trying with all her might to pay attention to those last few pages of the Bible. Well, it's not like she's reading Revelation, but she is finishing what will make her a woman who had read the entire Bible. Based on the memory of her college roommate practically swooning over it, she saved Song of Songs for last, a brief eight pages about a bride and groom about to embark on their life together. The man she hopes to someday marry sits at the dining table, clicking away on his computer.

The accented English comes from a bizarre movie told in four languages, none of them particularly well spoken. Nothing made sense.

In one scene, the Mexican-born artist living in France says in English, "I want you to touch my hair."

His London-born, French speaking love interest replies, also in English, "I can't do that."

With eight minutes to go in the movie, and feeling slightly batty, she can't really take it anymore, so she removes herself to the bedroom. The sunshine filtering through the window is slightly dulled by the few remaining clouds in the sky.

The combination of the dull sunshine, the piano-soundtrack, the foreign languages, the images she's seen in the bizarre movie makes her feel that if she looks up just at the right moment, outside of her window, she will see the place she wants to live next year. She's never seen it before, never been to that great mystery of a continent, so she doesn't know what she would see if she looks up, but she has a strong suspicion that it would look nothing like the parking lot of her apartment complex.

In fact, she has a feeling it would look like Australia. At that moment, with that music, and those voices and the strange images of the movie fresh in her mind, she feels right on the cusp of her future. She believes that she will feel this again, in a year perhaps, will feel it when she stretches across her bed in Australia and looks up at the window, knowing for a fact that if she does, she will see her next future.

A Day

Today is a day when I want to drive my car around all day, not being responsible for a single thing.

Today is a day when I realize that I'm still the restless person I've been all along, that I haven't really settled down in any way.

Today is a day when I feel fifteen, anxiously awaiting the announcement that will free me from the school day early and let me board the bus and head to a swim meet. Probably the first of the season.

Today is a day when the wind against my skin feels amazing.

Today is a day when I want to move to Texas and care about high school football.

Today is a day when I want to move to New York City, wear high heels without falling down, drink a mocha latte at three in the afternoon and stay out all night with my dark, moody boyfriend. Or better yet, my handsome, successful artist boyfriend. Moodiness is overrated.

Today is a day when I see children running around, and I feel grateful that I don't have a child yet but hopeful that I will have one in the future.

Today is a day when I deal with the ramifications of having dreamt that I had a daughter named Serena.

Today is a day when it feels unneccessarily cruel to make me stay indoors until 9 p.m.

Today is a day when I want to work in a bubble, in a safe, corporate office where I don't have to deal with snoring or screaming homeless people.

Today is a day when I want to not know that there are still people who need to shop at the 98 cent clearance center, because they have to.

Today is a day when I want to believe that everyone in the world climbed out of the need to have K-Mart layaway at the same time my family did.

Today is a day that I remember that though we were neither incredibly poor nor even remotely upper middle class, we have overcome some financial difficulties.

Today is a day I do not want to go back to how things used to be.

Today is a day when I realize I'm not entirely done finding myself.