Forever Right Now

by Emma Scott

One tiny tear in my fabric, the first of many that would eventually lead to a complete unraveling and remaking of me into someone I’d hardly recognize.

But I just want to love someone. It’s so simple and yet feels so impossible at the same time.

People passed me on the street and I had a crazy urge to reach out and grab one by the sleeve and tell them I was going to dance again.

I tried the TV, but it was too loud, talking at me.

Sawyer swung her down and then tossed her up in the air in the way that guys did that made babies squeal with laughter, and made every human with ovaries in a twenty-yard radius inwardly panic.

I went to my bathroom and took a very long, cold shower.

“Besides, telling you not to love is like depriving a flower of sunlight. You aren’t meant to be contained, Darlene.

You can’t argue with T-Swift, I typed. No you cannot.

I needed to see Darlene; my hands wanted to touch her, my overworked brain needed to laugh with her, and my stony heart wanted to be with her, and give whatever we had between us an honest chance.

“You get back what you put in. Negative shit gets you negative shit. Positive energy begets positive energy. Whatever you put out there in the universe…it listens. And then it answers. So when I talk, I try to give it something it wants to hear and hope it answers with something I want to hear.”

“This is no house. It’s a home.”

“The universe listened,” he said, “and then it answered.”

“Mama,” Olivia said, hooking a little chocolate-covered finger my way again. “Darlene my mama.”

Just kill my ovaries

Because I had a lot to give, and I’d finally found it.

Olivia gave me a perplexed baby look that said, I believe we have already established this, silly woman.