Sometimes

I want a sunflower-filled refuge.

I want a place where I can have my cake and eat it too.  If I have a cake, how on earth are you going to expect me to not want to eat it too?

I want to be able to exist, tensionless, in this world.  I don't want you to make me feel bunched up in two extremes at the same time.  I want to be able to embrace you as you are and not feel forced to divide you up.  I put you over here . . . and I put you over there . . . and you can stay right here . . . and you move over just a little bit there . . . Like I'm placing an invisible sticker on everybody's forehead with a number that indicates emotional distance.  No.  I don't want to feel like I have on these covert layers.

I want to dash cognitive dissonance into a million pieces.  Away with you, dichotomies!  Away with you, either/or.  Away with you, pinched face, demanding lines in the sand.  I can like Curious George and Edgar Allan Poe.  I can want curly-haired, dimpled, chocolate-smudged faces and a PhD.  I can make a PowerPoint and strut in high heels and make mashed potatoes.  I can like Christian Southern roots rock and Motown oldies.  I can steel myself against self-righteous churchgoers and academicians.

I want my own language.  Don't force me to speak yours.  Don't try to shove words into my mouth or try to coax them out.  Especially if you aren't a wordsmith.  Especially if the mold of your own mouth was cast in a one-track block.  Especially if you don't know how my words form or where they come from.

I want the world-weary cynics to stop being so smug.  Do you think you're the only ones enlightened and tired?

I want that moment when my guitar sounds like a mellow bell.  When our eyes first meet.  When the sun gently nudges me awake.