Thoughts from a Thinking Girl

I blink my eyes shut, breathe in a rushed wish, raise my eyelids and blow out the candle. I am

embarrassed, wonder if I’ve chosen a good-enough wish, what others will think, fake

having made a wish when my mind draws a blank.

We are not used to dreaming in public.

What if I breathed this dream all the way in? Past neck and shoulders, into the bottommost

lobe of my lungs?  Allowed the warm, hope-infused air to rise my belly like sweetened

yeast dough toward all the other dreamers? Only after expanding, would it enter

my body, separate itself from the nitrogen, oxygen and argon, a new element

for the periodic table of desires, longing, it will be called,

given a symbol we will one day come to recognize as universal,

known as the matter that makes up even more of our bodies than water.

I will hold this elemental substance within until I release it as prayer, from your lips to God’s ears,

my grandmother used to say, and the wish her grandmother told her in a language untaught to me.

I want to speak the language of hope, to pronounce each syllable of desire in its original cadence.

Like the novice, nervous presenter in front of an audience, I remember the advice

to cast one’s words to the last row of the house, to the eyes of the one (One?) I cannot see.

Oh, wish, I loose you now. Do your work, ignite sparks into flames. I am here, knife poised to slice,

the taste of longing on my lips.