She Should Not

(photo by Tabitha Bird)

A thirty-four year old woman should not want.

She should not want to learn french more than she speaks her own language.

She should not want to run away from the suburbs to live in an apartment above some Parisian street.

She should not want to touch the Mona Lisa.

She should not.

And yet, she does.

A thirty-four year old woman should not want to write more than she wants to have another baby.

She should not put her body on the line in a boxing ring.

She should not box.

She should not.

And yet, she does.

A thirty-four year old woman should not write more than she prays.

She should not want to publish a best selling novel.

She should not write to make herself be seen.

She should not.

And yet, she does.

A thirty-four year old woman should not want her abusive father to love her.

She should not want her mother to ask what it was like.

She should not want her sister to cry for the little girls they were.

She should not.

And yet, she does.

A thirty-four year old woman should not want to run naked down the aisle of a church and scream, "I hate you all."

She should not say she has bipolar.

She should not expect that friends will understand.

She should not want to be friends with people who cannot be friends.

She should not embrace those who have broken her.

She should not.

And yet, she does.

This one thing she knows. The world does not favor those who want. It favors those who settle.

She was never good at settling. It's a tiresome thing this wanting. An irksome habit.

Lonely, in ways no one will ever understand.

I am a thirty-four year old woman who should not.

And yet, she does.

What about you? What do you want that society says you should not?