I’ve Been Gilmored

The fall I found out I wasn’t having kids the sun was extra warm, the rain chubby, the jasmine pungent. I threw away the 3 inch long crochet booties the colour of butter, told no one about the secret draft of 14 names plucked and rearranged in order of preference mine and what I thought he might like based on how he named our cats after old white men. 50 years from now, no one will remember me, but 5 years from now they might stop asking me when as if I’m expiring as if they are awaiting the arrival of my potential made real not just some words on some website no one cares about 5 days from now. Today I am binge watching Gilmore Girls. Still eyes in the dark, realize I’m older than the single mom with the 16 year old kid, how envious I was of her home in her quaint little town where everyone knew her name, how as a teenager I thought her life seemed so small and yes quaint but now looking at the exact same thing—the framed memories, the cluster of girl things, a world untouched by men, the wielding of books as whips, the square footage and she’s not even a DINK—I am in awe, what a dream. Well Lorelai Gilmore is not real, so that’s okay. Don’t believe everything you see on TV. Taylor Swift is Lorelei’s real-life doppelgänger with the same twinkly blue eyes and deadpan matter, 5’9” and all, both from quaint towns with rich parents and big houses. That fall I went to see her (the real one) in concert (in the theatre) and it was so sparkly I half-worried I’d never see that much love in one room again, that I could never look at someone who’d look at me like I was everything like 70,000 people in a stadium looking at her, tell someone about sparkles and fairy dust and every tiny wonderful thing and really mean it. So much happened that fall. I went on more walks, could finally afford a real winter coat for the first time, could finally afford to go outside to try to remember every single feeling even the cold I’ve always avoided. 5000 years later, every last bit of me is gone but 5 years before I was born, my mother had a miscarriage she still talks about nonchalantly as her greatest loss. The 4 of us that became real were her greatest dream and everything she said she never wanted insisted she never wanted she hoped for in me. And all I’m doing with petals for limbs is write almost-poems with my rotting TV brain, comparing myself to someone who doesn’t even exist, walking it off walking it off walking it all off.