No One Belongs Here More Than You

by Miranda July

That day I carried the dream around like a full glass of water, moving gracefully so I would not lose any of it.

Then Potato ran by. He was a little brown dog, just like the woman said. He tore past me like he was about to miss a plane. He was gone by the time I even realized it had to be Potato. But he looked joyful, and I thought: Good for him. Live the dream, Potato.

I need clean new people who associate me with fun. This is my number two problem: I am never satisfied with what I have. It goes hand in hand with my number one problem: rushing. Maybe they aren’t so much hand in hand as two hands of the same beast. Maybe they are my hands; I am the beast.

I was assigned to the ones who needed extra help with their reading skills. I knew where I was headed: to the bottom of each page and the top of the next. I felt like I could do this forever, because nothing mattered more than anything else. I was patience defined, patience misspelled, patience sounded out slowly, letter by letter, with the t pronounced “shh.”