Chasing Happy Endings

There’s a restlessness that settles deep into my bones at night when my braided head kisses the pillow and my clipped panting eases into slow breaths, as my mind begins to sways with different ideas, switching partners faster than fancy ballroom dancers as I think about the brother sleeping next to me and the one resting beneath the tree and the friends I haven’t replied to today and the friends that moved too far away and the stories I still want to write and the poems I still want to read and the string of incoherent words in my mind that are still incomplete and the way your smile waves at my heart from a distance and that despite my arrogance and insistence, I no longer want to go to bed alone so I fantasize about a home in the far-away future, one that sings with the songs of my children as I sit in the garden with a cup of coffee that you warmed up for me and I don’t need to look at my watch because finally it won’t feel like I’m running out of time or that I’m falling behind because isn’t this what happy endings at the end of large spiral-bound books look like? Stories that begin with once upon a time and fairies and wishes and end with gentle kisses and damned witches and wedding dresses but there is still a life to be lived after the wedding itself so perhaps there are more stories to be written. More about after and more about before because I suppose, there is always a happy ending to be reached so little-me went to bed at night with dreams of traveling the world by sea but later I dreamed of Italy and last night I dreamed of signing my own books and falling for you over a simple look and getting hooked onto the next yearning because I’m not sure how reality translates into spiral-bound books but every night my restless bones are thirsty for a new happy ending, ignoring the difference between reality and false advertising.