I work at home. Some days I will do a lot of work. Once in a while I even try to structure a 9 to 5 day. But even days that I don’t work I might still work a little. Life all blends together.

I think I might like to have a job, I might like to go to the office, you know, more so that I might enjoy a stolen sick day than anything. I want a tethered life of the strictest responsibility so that I can earn and enjoy a vacation. I want a vacation’s last day in a foreign airport so that I can miss my life and my dog and so that, magically, I can grieve my vacation in advance.

I want a noisy family so that I can enjoy, so that I can appreciate, the beauty and the depth of a silent moment. I want an ugly sin so I can find a pretty absolution.

I want a lover I can miss when she travels. And rather than these friends who pass in and then out of my life, whose eventual exit passes as quietly as an eclipse, I want a friend who is drafted or who moves away suddenly or who is otherwise snatched from my life, so that I might miss him fiercely.

I want a cave of shadows from which I am permitted to emerge once a year into the stunning, dazzling light of day where the children play, the girls laugh, the boys riot, the lovers dance, the wind blows, the trees rustle, where the world is vital and blazing, and where, of course, I am welcomed, absorbed, taken.

I want a year to live so that I could, so that I would live. Strongly and vigorously and without repentance.

SS