Someday I will be all things at once.
I will be:
an elderly man, pious, penniless, threadbare, wondering if I’m still welcome at the cathedral despite the fact Ramona’s now singing with the angels.
I will be:
a gregarious center-of-attention kind of guy. Hey, I might drink more than my old lady says I oughtta, but at the end of the day, who doesn’t have a vice or two? I’m a good guy. I know what the Cubbie’s should do to get to the World Series. I know what the ladies like, how to reward myself for a hard day’s work. But I know the world, too, and the world’s tough for hardworking guys like me. So sometimes I turn off the charm, sit at home on Sundays. Cook Helen eggs.
I will be:
you, the reader, who understands
I will be:
a nerdy sort of fellow who enjoys spending time contemplating elves and fauns and other faerie folk who is, above all, supersmart and hilarious and very, very, very nice. I run deep into the woods, rebuked, after two leggy sunbathers laugh at my offer to lotion their backs. There, I find none other than Winona Ryder, perfect, doe-like, draped in too much fabric, still cocooned in a ‘90s chrysalis. I crack her out of her shell, and she blinks up at me, curling her oversized sweater over her knuckles. She falls in love with me, right then and there. I can hardly believe, but it’s true. She takes my hand. She thinks I’m cute. I always knew someone would understand me, and because I’m nice, I always knew that someone would be beautiful, and because I’m smart, I always knew that someone would be fragile.
I will be:
a homosexual, porcelain skin, lips so pink they flower like a woman’s. Men admire me for the delicate gangle of my elbows and knees, for my extraordinary articulation, for the beauty of my silk shirts, but truly, I’ve been ruined for love: Fabrizzio’s son gave me a rose and drowned at eight.
I will be:
a melancholic young academic, a hot-under-collar rebel building up steam in the undergraduate library. I’m the intellectual no one has been before! Unusual in a way no one’s been before! In the middle of writing the definitive essay on heartbreak in Proust, I can’t stop staring at an aloof blonde’s spindle wrists. If only Angie would look over here—the almost-childlike pout of her lips, her steely, New England grey eyes—she could be my muse.
I will be:
a boatman on a lonely sea
I will be:
a billionaire who used to be kind of raucous, not always taken the most serious, not always the best to women, but hey, that was the 80s and hey, I just got wrapped up in the action—lights, camera, action, baby!—got wrapped up into all that fast living. But now things are different. Now things have changed. I’ve always been a family man at heart, and all I want these days is to be taken seriously.
I will be:
a serial killer who keeps the following meticulous records of my victims, all women:
journals of whereabouts for six months pre-murder
skin from the left thigh, six inches down from the woman part
clipped hair turtled into a single ball called “essence of woman”
When the police woman come to my jail cell to write a profile of a woman-hating serial killer, she realizes I am complex; I am a man, not a beast. A crack of sympathy breaks into the ice-woman detective’s frozen heart. She learns I was:
a smart yet unchallenged kid
a worldly-minded soul tied to provincial burdens
misunderstood genius
ultimately failed more by the world than it was failed by me
I will be:
me, the writer, who understands
I will be:
a presence older than time with a knowledge of the plains, the rolling sea, the ocean, the universe before people, before life, before knowledge all housed in the greatest gift of all: a baby boy.
Someday I will be not only these things, but also everything else. But now, I must wait.
Alicia Bones finished her MFA at the University of Montana in 2016. Her work has been published in Necessary Fiction, Entropy, Qu Literary Journal, Maudlin House, Spry, and is forthcoming in Fairy Tale Review.