_{Joan Brown, Girl Sitting, 1962}

When I was a kid my sister and I used to play this game with a globe. We would close our eyes and spin the globe and the other would yell "stop." Wherever our finger landed was where we were going to end up living one day. The best places were the ones hardest to pronounce, surrounded by the most water, and the farthest away from where we were at that time located. We played similar games with my mother's magazines, this is who your husband will be, this is what your kids will turn out to look like; there were endless variations. The point was the possibilities were limitless.

As I think about moving away from Mudville and moving towards a different future, I have a hard time believing in those same kind of possibilities. I am turning 35 in a matter of weeks. I will be half of 70. Both round, plump numbers. Both ripe and solid.

Everyone tells me the world resounds with opportunities, choices, miracles even. And I keep trying. Try to keep my eyes open. Try to not anticipate the answers. Try to stop memorizing my lines.

It helps when the leaves start falling and the cement turns orange, yellow, red with their dye. It helps when there is dew on my car every morning and the sun squinting through my dirty windshield.

I can hold my hand up against the sky
and the sky seems very blue
very bright.