How many of you have unwritten books inside?

Have you ever imagined a moment in your life to start a novel?

Do you look at blossoming flowers during spring and remind yourself to look up?

Do you imagine parallel lives with the choices you didn’t make and lives that didn’t happen?

Do you think about how your present is slowly becoming the past?

Do you think of getting old and frail, dying with all these stories inside you?

The Daydreamer's Atlas

Things I often wish to do

Say a no with straight face and no explanation,

Laugh mindlessly,

Not worry about my teeth coming out,

Ask inappropriate questions – do you think of killing yourself often? What lives, or who lives rent-free, in your head? Have you sat in a place of worship and cried? Have you like me, not read Sartre?

Take off randomly,

Walk across France,

Kiss in front of the Eiffel Tower (show the middle finger to those who say it’s cliché),

Bake a sourdough bread,

One day, be brave enough to live without letting my nerves play a game of run and hide.

Things I often think about

The girl who taught kids from difficult backgrounds in America made candles in her free time, and travelled every summer,

The underlying emotion behind work emails,

(Then berating myself for finding feelings in a land of none),

How different life would have been “if”- there weren’t umpteen if – mostly “if” I did not have anxiety,

The name of that student in the bar in Salzburg,

The bartender who consistently refilled my water,

The skywalk on my way to college,

My selective memory of things I don’t want or want to remember.