girlish and greying

My mug is the one with dried tan drips down the lip, and nutella fingerprints on the side. I can't drink my coffee fast enough, I can't even pause to wipe the chocolate spread off of my fingertips; I'm thoughtless and impulsive, driven by eagerness, not hunger. A fresh bite of chocolatey cream on the vehicle of my choice (usually rice crackers) is chased with burnt coffee to achieve a woman-child's idea of harmony: sweet, deep and bitter. Even those three words are giving it too much credit. 

 

Who eats chocolate for breakfast?

 

"Oh, but it's a nutspread, it's healthy."

 

I roll my eyes at my inner dialogue.  I can't even fool myself.

I go to work, I file my taxes, I keep a tightly controlled digital calendar, and yet I still feel entirely inadequate as an adult. Does this sensation ever go away, or will I be plagued with girlishness beyond the point when I've lost my teeth and can't climb stairs anymore? 

 

I giggle and make voices, I play video games and do little dances (sometimes at the same time), I even skip when the urge strikes. I'm slowly approaching middle-age, and I feel like Shirley Temple's curls: perky, elastic, giddily bobbing up and down, when everyone around me has settled into a tightly woven braid: joyless, stressed, and bound by their choices. 

 

I don't want to be a braid.

space, the final frontier

       What people don't tell you about larger living spaces is that you can go longer without cleaning and washing. That pile of laundry that used to sit so prominently in your eyeline in a small apartment, is swallowed and made unnoticeable by the echoing empty space in quarters twice the size. You let it grow to an unreasonable size because it becomes an invisible fixture lining a barren wall. A bursting stack of papers on a small desk becomes a needle in a haystack on a two-meter desk. A dish in a large country-style sink is hardly noticeable, compared to a small, shallow sink that thrusts it's contents out like the chest of a proud strutting pigeon that has mistaken itself for a peacock. Big spaces swallow the mess and hide the dirt. How often does one sweep in such a place? Twice per week? Once a decade? Never? I step on glass and can't even pinpoint where it came from, let alone when it came from.