The day I turned 30, my body changed, or so it felt. I think I still look somewhat the same on the outside. It’s just the inside that feels different. Things started going past shaped and wobbly. I felt like I had lost my youth, that was, until I had more than a couple of men witnessed me. According to them and their naked torso in the moonlight, everything is fine.

And yet, it isn’t. The flame is fading slightly. The light feels like she is dimming, though she is not going out. Perhaps it is because I stopped running for a while. I felt wobbly, as I said, like parts of me might start to fall off.

My grandma is losing her teeth. She tells me it is the worst part of getting old. Bits have you started to fall off. I don’t know what to say to her when she tells me these things, so I just tell her about the ship of Theseus, and how if you take a board off the ship, or replace the mask, it is still the same ship. She is still the same person, just there are a little bits of her missing.

My soul is a Favourbrook coat. The silk-laden one from London. She shimmers in the cold winter breeze, keeping her wearer warm. My soul, like her, is thick and sturdy, velvety, colorful, embroidered, beautiful, magical, haunted. She is regal. I wear her to fancy balls where eligible bachelors line the oak wooden staircases beneath medieval tapestries. I am dark purple, and my velvet buttons are scarlet red, and along my seams are dark green, adorned in a pattern of Irish clover, and the flowers along my sides are orange, black-eyed Susans. I shine. I am not meant for the beach. I am not meant for the sea. In the forest, and through the misty hills of the Isles, I glide protecting someone on horseback. With travels, studies, failed relationships, old firings from jobs, I have begun to wither slightly. My colorings have been fading slightly. My velvet and silk a little threadbare in places. But I was made for a special occasion, this life, this gift of being.

I am perpetually overdressed, and if you look closely between the flowers, you can see the inscriptions handed down to me in Yiddish and Irish, of ancient tongues by gone, and yet, you can take the girl out of England, but you can’t take England out of the girl. She is going places, that coat. She should take another look at herself in the mirror, whenever she is in the world, and try to remember her detailed greatness. Even if her parents went on to make other coats. Even if she was left out in the rain by them once or twice. Favourbrook is not just fabric hodge-podged together. To make her took detail, time, attention. She is unique. One of a kind. Just like “God” put so much care and attention into creating each one of us. She was made for a special occasion.

I trapped Francois. Or at least I tried to. My “best friend” had ditched me for her arsehole boyfriend at Oxford. I had to find a place to sleep after the club. He was handsome enough, just my type. A French man with curly blonde hair and glasses. I don’t remember much about him. The sex even less. I tried to cram into his single bed with him in his darkness that night. We never spoke to each other again.

I tried to trap Will, I guess. I told him about my IUD and how the doctor said there was a chance I could be pregnant. I watched the last of his attention. I wanted him to reach out and change his mind. Call me his girlfriend. Move to Mexico. Love me. Feed me. Treat me like a princess. Unfortunately, it was true at that point that he didn’t care. Too emotionally unavailable. Back for his job working for the man. The Doctor Who replaced my IUD told me: “I bet this one won’t last the full eight years. You’ll be back.” She was probably right; except I wouldn’t be back with Will. It was a cry for help and attention and nothing else.

Blake was a thin, weed-smoking boy from Northern California. He once made me pay for the gas in his car that could barely make it between the hills of Stinson Beach and Sonoma. I watched him light the small glass bowl with hash. I watched the thick white fumes enter his frail, white body. Like a ghost.

When we went to Golden Gate Park, I watched mothers take one look at him, and glance at their children worriedly, shewing them away. He had that effect on people. His pants, black from Dickies, but stained with paint, had holes in them. His cheeks were hollow. His beard, his hair, were straggly.

When he drove me to Faustin’s house in Mill Valley, an old lady who sat in her house all day drinking herself to death, I did a double take as Blake led me into the woods. In the reflection of him, moving through the wooded hillside up towards the house, I saw the headlines flashing across my mind’s eye with my picture on it: Girl, murdered by deadbeat, pothead boyfriend in Mill Valley. I wondered how I had ever trusted this maniac and let him into my life. I think I even smoked with him.

Those days, I was definitely doing something for the thrill of it. I worshiped him in the sense that Blake had shown me the stars. He did deals with the devil, he said. He showed me a world far outside the confines of my uptight schools, the rules, the lady like things to do. His were the first eyes I remember, looking too deeply and fully seeing his soul, and have him see mine. His music was terrible, like a cacophonous smacking of the guitar, an otherwise beautiful instrument. His singing was even worse. But I liked his musings with the universe. I liked his hatred of capitalism, mostly because he was so disenfranchised from it. I liked the sincerity with which he spoke of my beauty, and intelligence. I’m a sucker for a good compliment and flattery, I guess.

I often wonder where he is now. If he ever moved out of the broken-down trailer, filled with “bud”, in his mom’s backyard. If he ever found a decent paying job after they legalized weed in California and destroyed his plans for fighting the industry blockheads. Fire with fire.

Jorge. I met him freshman year of college in the rafters ofan old Victorian building on the University of Pennsylvania campus. He was ofUruguayan descent, but grew up in Arizona, and that night we talked ofeverything. Our personalities clicked like fire. Our wits and intellects mergedinto one. We talked for hours into the madrugada, the early, bewitched morning.He awakened something in me. He praised me for my art. That, l later learned, ismy Achilles heel. The men who validate my creativeness, my prolificness,something I never got from my parents.

I wasn’t attracted to him then, physically anyway. That’s alwaysbeen a challenge for him. He drinks like a fish. He smokes like a chimney. Asif he is one of those flames that burns out brightly then ceases quickly in theworld. Like his father, who also died young, and forced him to become the manof the house and take care of everyone, including his mother and siblings.

I regret, Jorge, waiting some 10 years later until you tookme out to dinner in New York to tell you that I loved you. I’m not even surewhat I meant by it, platonically or otherwise. But I wish I had not cared aboutwhat Sarah thought. I was always a little bit embarrassed by you. Yourclumsiness. Your greasiness. Your pimples. I wish now that I hadn’t been quiteso shallow or self-conscious. I wish I had let myself feel and truly love you,the way you deserve to be loved, and the way that you also couldn’t accept whenI told you I loved you last summer. Why don’t you ever reach out to me? Why didyou have to have your own complexes, and choose women that needed saving?

I regret everything. I always thought in my mind that wesomehow end up together. But then you went to be a whistleblower for Google andyou spent your time between Phoenix and New York. Maybe not all hope is lost.Maybe I can still bring you back to me somehow. I am sorry I am so independent.I don’t need saving, except, maybe, by being with you. I hope to find someoneelse now, I guess. Someone with your intellect, your curiosities, yourgenerosities, your kindness. Someone with your sense of responsibility andduty. Your laughter. Your smile. I won’t give up hope. You taught me so much.You showed me the beautiful parts of myself that for so long I had wanted to beacknowledged and witnessed. I showed you your beautiful parts too. And both ofus shrunk back in fear.

Why is that? Maybe we are both broken in the same ways. Iregret fantasizing about you when I pleasured myself. I regret telling you howI was really feeling. Don’t the damaged and the broken belong to night? Am Inot allowed to find you handsome? Caring? Bright? Wonderful? Maybe this is fuckedup, but I will keep a little window of my heart open for you, in case you everwant to change your mind and climb inside. No rush, but just keep in mind thatI’m 30 and I kind of want to have children. I am sure I’m romanticizing you.You are not that great. I am great, or so the vagosphere tries daily toconvince me that I am. Did you not also think that to you at some point? Youcalled me prolific. Did you not admire my greatness?

What a funny thing time does to people. Tears us apart.Transport us to different countries. Creates whole separate paths for us so farfrom the people we want new and loved. As for me, I always felt some need tomove myself very far away. Away from a home where I was never taught I could beenough, where I was never allowed to love all the way in. It’s not like mybrightness is dimming. Do you still see it?

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I’m looking for a man in finance… Just kidding. Urgh, saying that really has messed me up.

I am seeking… To be seen… Someone who can see me fully. Witness me. Caress me. Hold me. Catch my breath. I am seeking someone I can be myself around. No more of this, pretending, making yourself up to be palatable to others. Dressing myself up every day. Putting on a mask. Is that too much to ask for. Someone to love me just the way I am? No mascara on the lashes. No filler on the lips. The little bit of my tummy, the dip or two in my hips. So far this ask has proven impossible. Probably because we are all too busy in this world right now. Looking at ourselves. Looking at our screens. Alone in such close proximity.

One day, I had a dream that I met someone and together, we formed a power couple. Producing our best work together. Creatives at our core, in our bones, making a living from our labors of love. Someone interesting. Someone inspiring. Someone decent but not too good looking. You know I can’t handle competition.

I am seeking opportunities to be generous, to love and give more to the world than I thought, capable. Yet another challenging project. Yet another beautiful idea brought to life, and like that, set free. Just as I want to stay, here. In my freedom. With someone who really challenges me and interests me. In a good way.

I see the rolling pine-filled hills of California. I touch the hot rocks lane out in the summer sun. I stand in the streams rolling over the grassy Donegal mountains. I fix myself a dress and matching skirt made from the woven linen of Oaxacan cotton. I put on my shoes, sandals that help me glide along the rocky banks, and climb high on the buildings in cities, flitting across oceans in seconds. I smell the cloistered churches and hidden abbeys of England, of Mont St. Michel. I smell the light beaming through the holy stained glass and the lecterns, and the quiet marble monuments, the fading graves. I speak whispers of Earth’s flowers, growing in climbing vines along the broken gates and wuthering walls of time and patriarchy. I shoot moon beams from my heart across the star sky to speak with new, celestial beings I know not. I chant in the shapes of the wind rushing over the water over a remote lake in the mountains, as a glowing pink moon rises up over the silhouette of the ridges. A kingdom I will try to claim as a steward of my own. I taste the sweet richness of jasmine and Flor de Lis, as if I am a water lily in one of Monet’s paintings. I stretch out like his paintings also, along the walls of the MOMA, sprinkled with layers of flower undefined. Some parts of me are clear. Others are more abstract. I do not claim to know the truth of my depths or the depths of others. How could anyone?