Wishes

I wish to be as wise as a fifty-year-old woman, I wish to be as curious as a five-year-old child. I wish to be as fearless as a fifteen-year-old girl, but a fifteen-year-old tightrope walker, so cautious and precise. I wish to be floating with my eyes closed in a boat, letting the stream of life take me wherever it wants me to go, but I also wish to have my hand on the rudder, following a path, carefully charted and mapped by the inch. I wish to strike as a dangerous person, a person of power and piercing character – someone to be reckoned with, but I also wish to be gentle and warm and round and fun and kind – someone that’s agreeable to everyone. I wish to live big and mighty, shifting mountains, the world, and many hearts and lives, making my mark in history, but I also wish to live small in quiet peace, fading away in the end as if I wasn’t even there. That’s more than three wishes, I expect, but I also wish that I would keep on wishing.