I have no desire for adventures in far off lands

Or romantic rendezvous with men

that I make up 90% of who they are while they show me a meager 10% of character that intrigues me just enough to entertain messy top lipped sessions in dark corners.

And, I clench my breathes awaiting for that vibrant 10% to be unwavering past the first few hours

in anticipation for weekends

holed up in a bed I call my own if only for the credit card hold with my name on it.

And we play house and pretend it’s not as rented a fantasy as the apartment we christen every last inch of.

No, now I only desire for a man to waltz into my life in the middle of an ordinary sunny day and declare with every inch of Nobel dullness that he can conjure up and simply declare

I’m him and you are her.

No more second guessings or tireless games of chase. For we leave all of that to the daredevil amateurs with far too many years left to make mistakes and enjoy the in-between months of sullen broken hearts.

I only desire the romantic gestures that comes with assurance and clarity.

An old world patina of a life well lived. Fine lines upon a face that have been broken in as slight evidence of summers spent in Mallorca and Puglia and the Moroccan desert.

An exhale exists between us in the knowing that this is finally it.

A glow of golden safety that only a child of countless abandonments can truly be intoxicated in and drunk off the mundane of quiet commitment.

A flash of youth still sparkles in the truth of words exchanged in the hours where the living is less alive and the dead seem to reside.

There is no room left for broken promises, unfaithful actions or the otherwise.

We settle into a life that is comfortable and familiar as one’s favorite old sweater slipped into after a long day of battling the friends and foe of this life.

Yes, quiet commitment sounds right.

June is an island. And the only inhabitants are my girl and me.

June is an island of anticipations and in-betweens

Long days of list making and preparations for the voyage ahead.

We hold each other tighter these days as death and loss has become real to her - both the loss of people and the fading of childhood she so desires to do over again - even if just the last five years she says, while we lay on her bed in the cocoon of her childhood bedroom. One single wall painted powder pink in the home numbered 45 on a street named after a mountain.

Our walks are longer here on our island - there is an awareness of life playing out and we don’t want to miss a moment. So we stop at favorite old trees, breathe in the jasmine that lines the over grown paths we can still walk through with eyes closed. Climb up neighborhoods that played backdrop to seasons of brokenness and bliss and we remember days before the dog and laugh about the scooter that was stolen from the front porch that one summer.

She cries in the shower when she thinks I can’t hear her and all that water reminds me of the waves from a very different June on an island off the coast of Spain where I found myself. I whisper a prayer to God that she too find herself like her mother did - but to make it sooner than 36.

June on our island feels like the last sip of an Italian cappuccino in the early morning before the day begins

That moment of pause and anticipation before a long adventure ahead

The familiarity of espresso and thick milk that teases every taste bud - and you can’t tell if it’s the best coffee of your life or the timing and setting

The chatter of crowds around you blurs into a symphony of voices turned into your private concerto

The relaxed nature of your posture because there is nowhere to be now only someone new to become

And the foam lingers upon the top lip as a reminder of the decadence of life once enjoyed

June is an island of lingering in the past while we await the boat to our future.

Breeze of change teases me on familiar neighborhood walks

The thought of being a childless mother comes often enough that we have made friends with one another now

and this new relationship invites me to begin the arduous process of untethering an invisible velvet ribbon that runs from my youngest daughter and I

Everywhere I turn is a subtle reminder of a magical yet tragic childhood all three of us played out

The world is our living museum of a thousand memories I’ve attached the girls names to all of them

Wildflowers

Old glass jars that filled meticulously made potions of the day

Ice cream shops

Torn sheets of paper made into delicate Mother’s day cards

Court house benches

Parking lot that played host to pick ups and drop offs

Chipped plates

Birds singing

Even silent rooms, hold meaning now

And yet there is a knowing that even this life we’ve lived has always been on borrowed time

that indeed nothing is permeant, every-thing changes

nothing and nobody actually belongs to us in the end.

I stand on the edge of reflections…

that to mother was always a necessary loss to find myself

We darted in and out of the winding corridors,cobblestones under our feet.

Yellow of lemons battles the yellow of sunshinethat fights its way through lush green cocoons.

Leather sandals, thin enough for my blood to glide over generations past, as I stub my foot more times than I can keep track of.

Tourists never understand: the true backdrop is in fact not the multicolored dwellings

that hug the Tyrrhenian Sea made famous in photos—

but rather the climate,which cannot be captured on film.

The summer heat is dry yet damp, and all-consuming.

Sweat pooling at the nape of my lower back.

My body always begging for an Italian of every variety.Even old men hold an odd attraction,and I let my mind play with the idea of being bedded by a tall, tanned man with white hair.My hands entertain how it might feel to get lost—and found—

before I’m pulled back to the thickness of citrus in the air, a slight bergamot essence teasing my tongue

After all,

it is the mission of the momentto find the decadence of lemon creamthat only comes from a place like this.

I always smell of sex here.

Men fall into my arms, and I secretly love it.She hates it.

Her lips say “I love you,” yet her eyes speak a language only souls understand. She fails to realize I am fluent in this foreign tongue.

“One Delizia al limone for two people,” in my perfect Italian.She looks at me with an ever-complimentary smile—it's hard to make out the gleam of the knife in her teeth.

It was the last meal we shared before the chapter of us was closed and drowned in the very sea we sat admiring that morning over silky full-fat cappuccinos.

I felt the end while our spoons scraped through the layers of decadence, a familiar mirror of these friendship layers

Thick.Gluttonous.Sweet.Rich.

But will make you fat if devoured too many times.

I was definitely born in the right generation this time around.

A glowing red society that breeds high achievers and truth seekers.

Biohacking, habit stacking, and every inch of one’s day turned into a personal CV—played out like a movie in your mind.

This generation feels the crunch of time on our backs.

To pause means to acknowledge the dire truth: we are running against a clock.

Holding our breaths and waiting for the other shoe to drop.

The last straw.The rug to be pulled.

While we load our days with something- anything, that might say I was here, even for a little while, and this is what I was able to do with it all.

So it’s no surprise that I’m uncomfortable in the doing nothing and in the stillness of life.

By the time I drop into my app’s meditation, it’s almost done.

But there are moments nowthat have only come with age.

I embody some semblance of a wise woman.I cosplay a gray-haired Italian nona.

Where I can walk without tech in my ears,listen to birds, and actually hear—between the veil of society and nature’s ancient medicinal melodies.

And then there is the coveted five minutes I allowbetween the rituals of a rigorous bedtime routine.

It’s rather cruel how the sting of my eyes is the cuefor my hand to relinquish the book from my grip.

And only then can I flop over in unison,letting my own pages close for the day.

The surrender of the body, bred by the red society,shifts into an ache of nothingness.

Her mind loops and spins and twirlswith opening lines of poetry and songs waiting to be composed.

The fight to pull her body upfrom the delight of this delicious nothingness—to write it all down in a flurry, in hopes to be one of the greats.

The sweet surrender of nothingness wins

There’s a knowing that comes with age—that everything is, in fact, finite, that loss is on the other side of every joy-filled moment.

Years 35, 36, 37, and 38 saw me holding my breath in anticipation for the proverbial other shoe to drop. The heavy, concave ceiling due to crash in over me any day now. And the aged Moroccan rug to be pulled out from underneath the feet I was desperately trying to plant somewhere between the known and foreign versions of a life I was creating.

Any sudden movements could spell out disaster.

And then there are the moments where finite is replaced with infinite, and you’re somewhere soaring above all anxieties, and lightness all but takes over the entirety of the human body your soul inhabits.

You’re united at last with what it might feel like to be a child again—a place where time felt endless and there was no question in your mind that you would awake the next morning, along with all the people you love—safe and sound and ready for more. Next days meant newness and all the unread books of life were stacked higher than your little eyes could make out through the cascade of sun that drenched your days—even in the rain.

39 feels like the marriage of these two foes. A truce was called after they realized there would never be a clear winner, that the finish line is indeed death at the end of every road. So I stand hand in hand with the reality of both. To my left, finite bows her head to my life, exposing every memory made as a reminder to relish in the variety of moments—dare they be traffic lights, brutal fights, and otherwise. To love and cherish my adored ones with everything I’ve got. Hug longer. Feel deeper. Smile with a purpose to cure pain. Allow myself to get drunk off the words that cross the lips of those we love, for we never know what last words our ears may hear.

To my right, infinite wears a silk robe in just the right shade of gold, so attractive it lures my librian taste. He is perfumed with the endless possibilities of life, and I am high off the energy of his aura. He reminds me that time is to be used to fulfill my deepest desires. Touch, taste, feel, plan, and execute. Reach high and big and farther. Do it all now; squeeze out every last drop.

I guess this is the gift of being human—to feel it all and make peace with the past, present, and future, not favoring one over the other, but enjoying each like a well-balanced meal.

Help me speak up on behalf of…

Every womanEvery motherEvery daughterEvery childless womb

Help me speak up on behalf of the ancestors I am directly connected to,Whose blood flows through my veins, intertwined in this lifetime and those before.

Dear God, allow my voice to be pure honey to the ear,Wrapping every version of me that has ever been here

A healing rapture where the divine and this life collide,Crashing into one another, free from a timeWhen voices were silenced and pain was stuffed down into bodiesThat waged war on themselves from the inside out.

Help me speak up on behalf of every truth that has been locked away in caves,Warned with knives to throats never to come out.

Anoint my actions to speak louder than words,My hands to hold with love that divinely comes from You.Let my presence be peace—blanketed even the smallest of cracks—

Please allow me to speak on behalf, of You

Truth be told—she suits you

I'm 39 now, and truth is the only thing I allow to escape from my lips.So here it is—No one would ever be enough for you in the end.

I saw it then, and now you are living proof of this consequential truth playing out.

Here we are, post-2022.Wedding bliss—I guess it’s all but faded by now.Perhaps that’s why I’m hearing from you?

Never too far out of reach,I see your tan fingers pulling at other women from the Rolodex labeled Variety.

She was stunning in Greece, up on a hillside overlooking the sea—They showed me the pictures.I smiled politely.I thought, she’s nothing like me…

Blonde, yes, but enhanced in a way I could never be.What, 10–15 years your junior?I wondered what the story was there,But it doesn’t matter anyway—it never does.We seek and attract all the brokenness in us.

And perhaps that’s why we could never be.Always trying to align, give it a try.Days of almost and what could be—our napalm and illicit drug.

Me, never letting you get away with anything.You, never saying quite the right thing.

No, really—she suits you perfectly.Nothing like the wild dreams of you and me.

There’s a certain envy that creeps in—I wish it weren’t truewhen they happen across my days,these light sprinkles of people who know very little about this type of pain.

They’ve never been tied to the fences of fate,where mothers lash out and fathers forget your birthdate,or what sits in your body after all these years

after being ripped from a home filled with women who swooned over you, only to be sentenced to a life where the warden says,No, baby, I love you, yet locks you in a cage.

They only know long summer days,riding bikes through the streets,their mothers and fathers waiting patiently—because that’s what kids do.

They test boundaries, and then they ride back, carefree,to a hot meal and a chair that stays in place

What it must feel like to be that free.

My envy turns to prayer that they remain this naïve and never know what it’s like

to be juggled and jumbled,lied to for the sake of keeping secrets,held hostage as collateral damage.

To stuff one’s face with love,because the truest love comes wrapped in conditions.

To know that all laughter, bliss, and earthly possessionscome with a price tag—to act right, to not step out of line.

I know what it is to walk through emotional landmines,to be woken up in the middle of the night

Where even your sisters try to hide the very lie—that they despise your existence.

Truth be told,I am the walking reminder of a failed marriage,evidence of deeds done in secret.

Oh, to be free.

I think I’d like to come back as a house the next go ‘round—

To be cared for, treasured, and adored

Tiny feet coming in and out over every door

To be the backdrop of life—wide-open moments and secret, private events.

Newlyweds trying on Mr. and Mrs.

Roses, hydrangeas, fig trees, and an old olive out backI’m watered, pruned, and admired at

Scrubbed floorboards on Saturday mornings

Babies bornOld bodies restSouls transition to what’s next

Nights kept up in both worry and glee

Furniture carefully sized up to fit just right

Fights that break the silence of the night

Loss and suffering—and a safe place to hide

Yeah, I’d come back as a house…

And host of every party, whether for 50 or just one

A kitchen dark, the fridge light on at midnightA bit of chocolate frosting escapes to the floor—he leaves it for the dog.

The porcelain of a toilet becomes a comforting thronethrough bouts of illness and regrettable takeout

I’d be the backdrop of every breakdown and breakup,the moments of enough is enough.

And he moves out, and she stays put,and the children shut themselves in their rooms.

Pipe bursts, the carpet gets ripped out—I never liked those colors anyway.

Fireplaces once filled with wood, mantles adorned with holiday trims.

A place of firsts and lasts and many a second chance.

Yeah, I think I’d like to come back as a house.