Wedding Plans

The moments before sleep are when I feel the most alone. My bed cover is green with yellow swirls -- reminds me of the sea, and when I lay down, seems as vast as the sea, my body a branch floating in it. A friend said last night he had finally accepted that he might not partner again. I opened my mouth to say I felt that same and couldn't. I attended all three of my siblings' weddings, and others. Read countless romance novels as a teenager. The dream always there. Even through the not-so-bad, the really bad relationships. Several years ago, I told an old friend I had revised my plans for my wedding. She laughed. "Honey, you've been revising your wedding for twenty years." It's true. I don't want abandon those plans, live out the rest of my life alone, and I suppose I may. But it has occurred to me that I would rather have this. This standing taller in myself. This often wry self-affection. This sense that I'm here, not in "you," whoever you are, not becoming you. Here, in yes, the sometimes lonely acres of my bed.