I don’t want to be an actual person today. I’d rather be an abstract concept.
Or something small, so small it’s barely perceptible, unless you happen to be looking for it. I’d love to be the pause in conversation, the one between when one person stops speaking and the other responds. One of those long, lingering ones when someone doesn’t know what to say and they’re really concerned about saying the right thing. When they know they have to say something but not what.
Today I’d do anything to not be me. And instead be the potential to be something. To live in the margin of other people’s experiences. Undetected. Unspoiled.
I’d love to be the beam of sunlight warming my cat as he lies on the rug. The beam of sunlight that my plants turn toward.
Heck, today I’d even settle for being the beam of sunlight that I have sworn at in the past. The one that filters in through the blinds and wakes me before I’m ready. Anxious about the day that’s about to begin.
I’d take being that particular beam of sunlight. Just to not be me. Really, I’m that desperate to be an abstract concept today.
But I suppose if I had the choice, I’d pick something else to be… maybe I’d be that energetic look you get in your eyes when you’re happy or have something wonderful to tell me but you haven’t said it yet. The look that tells me everything and yet nothing all at once.
Or maybe I’d be the way you sigh when you’re exhausted and content.
Instead of what I am now — a combination of so much love for you and a dozen goblins in a trenchcoat, tripping all over themselves, wreaking havoc, haplessly doing their best, a best that never quite meets anyone’s standards.