Little dreams for the future

All little girls have
big plans for The Future, and I
suppose that I am no different,
except for the fact that
My Future looms a bit nearer
than for the girls in
glass slippers and
shiny pink satin dresses.
Yes, I'll still wear the
dress, when the mood strikes, but my
slippers have shattered.
Prince Charming
killed himself, and I
buried the body.

Soon it will be
so long, suburbia.
Ever notice that no one
wants to stay?

Me, I don't want to stay
anywhere. I don't need much,
not even a home. I've always
felt like I'm nowhere, so why not
be everywhere?
In having nothing,
I will have everything.
What I'm trying to say is that
the nomadic life is my
preference.

I'll go where I'm taken.
I don't know who
will do the taking, but there is always
somewhere to go.

Maybe it will be Italy, where I can
learn all about the
history, be a tour guide somewhere.
Will I ever be able to laugh at the
ugly Americans without
feeling like one of them?

Maybe it will be somewhere in
Africa, where I can
live as a peasant, discover what hunger
really is, and define pain. These
translucent tears need
substance, substance a suburban white girl
can never give.
I should not delude myself, though -
I am no noble soul. I'll still have
the money I made ushering
wannabe photographers around Venice.

Or maybe it will be Japan, where I can
work in a little shop in a big city,
selling kitsch and clothes. I won't
do anything that will
tie me down, so I can
leave when I get bored.

I'll learn languages as I go, staying
one step ahead of myself. I am
no great communicator, the language barrier
is too vast a threshold to attempt
without assistance. I want to learn
so many that I almost
forget my English, so that the
words inside my head dance together and
make love, so thickly intertwined that
all the languages become one,
the language of me - a tongue with which
I can think fluently.

I'll go everywhere, and write about it all.
There has to be someone somewhere
who wants to read it. The first translation I
ever completed was
me to you, and it is the one I repeat
every day. I'll go everywhere,
and translate it all.

"Don't you want kids,
though?" Maybe if wandering
ever gets old. They'll be adopted.
What business do I have creating
new life when there is so much
cast aside?

"What about a
husband?" I could tell you I don't
need a man, and I will. I could tell you
I don't want one, but 'm not one to
lie, truth is all I've ever
had. So I'll wait for the one who
shares my definition of paradise,
the one who needs the same things from life
as I. If he stands me up, so be it.

All I have now, though, are these
cracked and splintered conjectures, ideas
for what can be, when it really can be
anything. Things rarely go as planned, and
though I know the What? and Why?,
the How? remains to be seen.

These dreams didn't die with Prince Charming, but
they're on their last breaths. Luckily,
I'm trained in CPR.