All This Could Be Different

by Sarah Thankam Mathews

Lord, I confess I want the clarity of catastrophe but not the catastrophe. Like everyone else, I want a storm I can dance in. I want an excuse to change my life. —Franny Choi

I was a consultant, or going to be. This despite my arty degree. A consultant in training. Three toddlers hiding in a suit.

So far being a slut had returned mixed results, and I suspected that, like swimmers with small feet or curvy ballerinas, I was not built for the championship leagues. There was some part of me too sensitive for it and I was not yet confident I wanted that to die.

That’s what a true adulthood had come to signify for me, a bowing down before the inevitable. For the lucky, this could be preceded by a period of freedom, the latitude of youth.

How unbearable it is to desire what another person can deny you.

I did not know how to explain this stubborn love for my parents that I staggered under, iridescent and gigantic and veined with a terrible grief, grief for the ways their lives had been compost for my own.

Even a week into this, Tig was texting less, calling infrequently. Perhaps this was the way of the world. Your best friend serving as placeholder for the real thing: the person who would audition to be your husband or wife.

lowkey decided I wanna write a manifesto someday

How was anyone expected to dream loftily about the future when the present ground them down to powder and nothingness?

Do you wake up each day for yourself or for someone else? Do you believe your life to be your own?