Want Not

My own little slice of the cosmos can be banked on from time to time.

Opportunities influx in multiples, then dissipate as regularly as the tides.

I’d like a new mantra. Don’t want for it. Then, it’s inevitable that it will come.

Pray, fantasize, hope? Each is a little piece of paper, vulnerable though seeming solid. Each blows away in a dry dust, leaving no residue, no negative of former thoughts, sand-slipped through clumsy fingertips.

Everything counted on gone, counted on because of the sheer volume of options, dwindled down to none, or worse, the one cast aside to begin with (the job half-done because it didn’t count, the relationship sometimes fought for because it surely wouldn’t last, if there’s three things before you then one, just one you might think, would work out). Bruised and deflated, an ego retreats back into its turtle-shell, whimpering—not to venture so fool-heartedly again (or at least until sufficient pity party is over).

Imagine the next time a boss, a parent, a huffy friend, high and mighty significant other demands, “What do you want for your life, your career, your heart?”

Nothing, not a thing, none of the above. Only then, I think, contentment, pared-down purpose, simple living in white moonlight and firefly flashes. Drained of envy and hard-worn bitterness, sour grapes and hints of deserving. Filmy, flimsy and light. Buoyant. Radiant.

Cut free from strings, routines and comfort snapped. Exhilaration with stability. Other oxymorons.

Fortune without the fame.

Character tall.

All wants, never needs, and not yet realized because of the self-fulfilling prophecy…

Want and you shall not receive.

Here’s when I’ll repeat my mantra. To trick my predictable luck, or lack thereof, into turning on itself and maybe, just maybe, flipping inside out.