3
Prose
If you asked me on a Sunday, I think I'd take a quiet life.
Ash Uchil
I want a house where I'd lie on the living room couch, fall asleep to a boring series in the afternoon. I want a degree in something that will barely make the rent like sociology or history or anthropology, maybe gender studies.
I want to have a few thousand more books than I could possibly read and 20 plants in my bedroom that I am just a little bit too much like my mother to keep alive. I want a wooden desk– preferably padauk–covered in stacks and sheafs of half-crumpled papers full of shitty, practically incoherent poetry about your saltwater hair and your sunburnt arms.
I want to read every single book by Kafka over the summer so I can write him more scathing Goodreads' reviews and my five-year plan is to learn more Kannada than just cuss words, maybe find God in my grandma's childhood home with its salt air and sand-flecked floors.
I want barbecues in the backyard and candle-light dinners when the lights go out, and I want to be able to point out all 88 constellations like they reside on the palm of my hands.
If you ask me on a Monday, I'll say that I want the money and the fame and the penthouse but on a Sunday I just want a home so I can fall asleep on the living room couch.