I wanted to live on Love Street when I grew up. To steal paperbacks about salvation sex and hide them under my bed. I told myself that one day the sound of my name would make a man sick and then well.
The dog was my very first love. We were criminal friends. She’d sneak the cat’s food and I’d let her do it. What I planned to do with my life? Escape normalcy. Find a man with a dog and a walk-in closet and make myself sick and then well. Feel better when smoking his calmness.
I grew up to be a grown up who got smoked out by previous lovers after sneaking their dogs into my life. Told myself that I’d someday I’d linger on Love Street and really live there. Become average and well. That for now, just the sound of my name would make a man love an adorable criminal like me. I hid inside my closet like a cat who stole the dog food back. Feeling sick only when thinking about how to grow up.
“We’re hidden inside the sound of our own names,” the doctor said. He’s seen how I can only live on Love Street. Wisdom like this is what doctors hide from us all, at first. How smoking calmness can only make you sick. What we fear most is that when we do grow up, the sound of our names will make the only man we have ever loved well and that he will never love us back.