I’ll Be Prom Queen
Someday I’ll be outspoken, ballsy, articulate, funny. Totally cool, like Fran Lebowitz, but without the cufflinks. Also, I’ll be slow talking, soft talking. I’ll think before I speak. A person others feel okay around, feel good around, want to be with for my earth-mothery energy, healing vibes. Not buzzing, jagged, all jumpy inside. I’ll be serene.
I’ll swim with sea turtles in the Galapagos Islands, hug strangers in Sedona, Arizona, bike the California Coastal Trail and hike the Appalachian from Georgia to Maine. I’ll go skydiving. I’ll be prom queen and valedictorian. I’ll get accepted to all the Ivies, but I’ll choose Reed or Evergreen, St. John’s or Bard. I’ll go barefoot to class in spring.
I’ll throw together a chocolate soufflé at two a.m. that my lover and I will eat with our hands, lick chocolate off burning fingertips, drink chilled Cristal in tulip glasses from World Market. A dreadful pairing the champagne connoisseurs would say but we won’t know.
Someday my house will be pristine. No stuff piled all over the place. A vase of fresh-cut flowers, wistful timeless elegant flowers, baby’s breath, lavender, sweet peas, freesia, will sit on my teak nightstand. Next to it I’ll place tiny rocks I’ve rescued from the side of the road over the years, slipped into a pocket or warmed in the palm of my hand, into their own blown glass bowl. You belong here, I’ll tell them. Settle in. It’s our time to shine.
Judith Shapiro
Judith Shapiro is a Washington, DC–area writer who spends a lot of time in Hoboken, NJ, staring at the New York skyline. When the novel she’s writing looks the other way, she secretly delights in flash prose and poetry. A Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, her work appears in The Citron Review, The New York Times, Bending Genres, The Sun, and elsewhere.
