I want to stop dreaming about that place where I used to work. I don’t want to remember that place, their faces, and the stress I brought home.

I want to look inside every apartment here and see where their cats and dogs live, what books do they keep, what furniture they’ve arranged in this small space where they live in between here and shipping out.

I want a week of rain, overcast, gray, dripping. I want a week of rain all the time. Nobody else wants this.

I want pepperoni pizza, but it has to look and taste like the kind we had in Flushing, small pepperonis, cupping the grease, crammed atop the cheese, a flavor and texture found nowhere else. My brother knows what this means.

I want the job I applied for so I can see many faces and rise to the challenge of helping with a smile and you go away feeling like nobody else mattered but you.

I want to write about the National Memorial For Peace & Justice in a way that has nothing to do with me, but I can’t figure out a way. Yet.

I want to find my pouch of flash drives and SanDisks that I lost somewhere so I can recover memories, my crappy writing, my happiness, my sanity, my everything, but I know that’s not to be.

I want my friend back, and my Dad back, but only if they’re not angry anymore.

I want to write about those ladies and their kids playing in the ocean who clearly had other ideas about staying dry, but I haven’t figured out the right words yet.

My windows are open tonight, a/c off and fan still.  The air is cool, finally.  This writing thing is coming back to me, finally. The plan is to heat up a sweet potato and broccoli and some rice, NYPD Blue in the background.  The plan is to stay wide open to everything that comes to me, and to approach my bed tired, a prayer, and deep breathing, hoping to be empty so sleep will be full and lengthy.

I have a thing about people who are all about “I want I want I want.” I get aggravated by their “me me me.” But then, everybody wants.  It’s not wrong to feel a need and a want.  My wants and your wants may never meet, but I want to know and understand.  That’s where give comes along and lights a candle and puts “give” into motion.

If you are prepared to stand in the knock you over ocean, naked, then you are prepared for “I want, but let me give you what you need.”

Give someone what they need, and enjoy the wants you receive when it comes.