Now that I’m here telling the young to pronounce correctly and write in a particular fashion, I tell myself that I’m only slightly closer to that finish line. I need mountains in the west with a history that only I admire because that’s just the kind of person I am – a subjective-priority-focused-sort-of-girl. Eventually, I will get that feeling once more — that sense of direction and misdirection, the comprehensive skills to say a fucking hello, and a Sanctuary. Even the filling of an empty museum is on my list of things to do. Here things feel temporary, but comfortable like a goddamn bed of nails. I remember being at that upturned house with you and my parents (we’ll both say that you were never a goddamn secret) and we lay on that bed of sharp pins for the first time, not at all frightened, just trying to get my dad’s money’s worth, and it’s because the nails are so close together that they don’t hurt our backs. I remember cringing whenever he spoke of money around you, anyone really, but especially you. I don’t think that boyfriend ever helped that lacking ego. It’s not your fault you’re an only child, though with your attitude, I doubt that kid would’ve taken a breath past his or her first year and if he or her did survive, he or she would’ve had serious competitive issues with his older or younger sister. I prefer you, as is, because I think you have the absolute desire –no, need– to be obsessed over. You may deny it in a heartbeat, but you want nothing more than a bunch of people fussing over your well-being. Of course, I’m the same way. If gone unnoticed for five minutes at the wrong moment, I feel helplessly neglected, and later, maybe even bitter (sort of like the girl in the tree who hates that we write from left to right and I always want to tell her that if it’s such a fucking problem, she can learn Farsi, move to Iran, perhaps get a hijab or yashmak or some type of headscarf before making the big move, then, problem solved. Though I’m sure for her complaining ass, only a million more problems would arise) but nevertheless, there will come the moments when I desire the silence around me, so I try to block out the environmental voices to focus on a blank sheet of paper and they may look at me with worried expressions, but then again, do I really plan on knowing them for the remainder of my life or the next two or three years? Things are so transient and yet I remember a time when I wanted to staple the clouds and superglue the sun in place so that I could permanently live in a state of bliss. I wonder if that particular sort of euphoria is only temporary. I mean, I’ve had other sources of happiness, mainly drugs, some mere moments of laughter (rather than the first happiness I spoke about) but their brevity is snappier than the longest moment, or rather incident, or even better, time period of happiness that I experienced at eighteen and nineteen, just four years ago. I have come to the idea that the reason I long for that particular rapture is because of its rarity. I’ve only been able to experience the plight of non-self-interest for a very short period, even could be considered a moment with the various other variables in my history. I am wondering if the other, more temporary times of happiness are taken for granted because I have them more often and their presence is scattered, but nevertheless existent, and at the same time mysterious and secretive like all the women who “pay the slightest bit of attention to me.” Not quite pathetic, but imaginatively perverted, I’d say.