I’m drunk or maybe just bitterly tipsy. One drink short of an apology. I’ve been texting you on and off since I closed my tab. Tonight I collected smiles and a couple “How you doings” but upon starting the square dance of “What do you do?” “How’s that working out?” I felt a resistance in my tongue to move into welcoming words. My grandmother complains about the rain on sunny days because she can feel it coming in her achy bones. What I’m trying to say is I can’t hang. Not tonight.

Tonight I don’t want to be defined by my pending English degree and volunteering in the sixth grade and I don’t want them to recite lines from comedians they've learned by heart. Maybe if I were up to it I could humor some dude’s debate on radio rap vs real hip hop, pretend I listened to Yeezus (I didn’t) or even get down with a brief breakdown of Built To Spill (of course your favorite album is Keep It Like A Secret, what a surprise, mine too.) But I’m not, I don’t even have energy to google-refresh myself on IPAs to entertain some guy who smells like Old Spice “Fiji” and has the Macklemore haircut.

Sometimes this is my favorite part—the routine of hoping I’ll feel the spark. It’s hard to know what you really want when there’s just an image in your head that comes with no captions and is too idyllic. It’ll be like that tell-tale dop-dop noise your dial-up made when it connected and the uneasiness dissipates and it’s not the whiskey.

The thing is I came here tonight for a reason but it’s like going to 7/11 when you should’ve gone to the grocery store. I’m in the aisle staring at instant ramen but I want to be in the produce aisle touching cool leaves of lettuces, filling my cart with colorful bell peppers. I want this connection tonight. I want to come undone beyond the unzippening of my dress.

I don’t want to stay up all night talking, as beautiful as that can be, knowing that I’m re-telling all 20 of my best stories— god, how many times have I told that story about falling off my top bunk or cleverly eluding bullies or getting my long overdue comeuppance. I’m a redemption story briefly hinting to you that I’m a girl with a past that doesn’t include hopscotch.

Sometime between my second drink and watching friends unwind from the 9 to 5 to “Blurred Lines” I’m scrolling through my contacts— all of them— Facebook, Snapchat, Skype. I saw your name and I scrolled past it. I tell myself I don’t need you tonight but secretly I hoped you were up because you were a sure thing. You’re convenient. You’re comfortable. I’m the sort of person that keeps takeout restraurants on my speed dial right after 911.

Even without being present you provide a service that soothes me—I can indulge in you and go to bed. You won’t end my loneliness but you’re better than going home to Netflix. You already know me. You know that foreplay with me is like watching Jean Paul Sartre at a disco (it’s nauseating).

You know I talk to much. There are times where you make me breathe in and out, hand on my chest, and say “Chill out, be cool.” You’ve got a bucket and a towel for when I start leaking emotions and I don’t have to explain or pretend I wasn’t broken from the start. I’m a beautiful antique teacup glued together waiting for someone to touch me after reading aloud the infamous sign: you break, you buy.

You welcome me with a hey yourself stranger. At first it begins with niceties but it doesn’t take long for the desperation overtakes me. I am aching for you to find in me what I don’t in myself — can I be your black Kate Moss tonight?

It takes forever for me to get started, you know? I wish I could feel as easy as I do when I’m taking a selfie, when I’m in control. I don’t even think of the sensuality that comes to me when I am alone like a good hair day when you’ve got no where to go. It’s eating the best dish of your life alone. There’s no witnesses, which is fine until you need an alibi. There are nights when I go out and confidence comes to me like the friendliest ghost returning with a “pardon, may I—” before slipping into my body and only dawn can exorcise it from me.

Yet during times like these, these low points, where I have a hard time placing what’s sexy, what’s hot, what’s now—I think too much, I said it before, and you’d think I was auditioning for a black comedy of errors when I show up in your bedroom wearing underwear with “defeatist” bedazzled on them.

I can tell you what I find sexy in others, but when it comes to me: Je ne sais pas. Have you ever played hangman and forgotten the alphabet? You’re just sitting, going, shit, shit, I know this! Sometimes I do not know what desire is until someone’s got two fingers in me and they’re asking me if I like it.

Any time I’ve ever tried to emulate it on my own it comes off too weird too awkward, so embarrassing and always ends like a Sofia Copolla movie where despite the beauty of it all nothing really happened. I’m cheaper than a Copolla film though— more Victoria Secret’s body mists than Marc Jacob’s “Daisy.”

I’ve convinced myself that I’ve got a beauty that takes time to enjoy more than most will find necessary. You have to grow to love my blemished skin, my dark brown eyes which won’t find their ways in poems unless I’ve written them. My phone vibrates and I’m scared to look.

I’m not sure what I want honestly. I’m just—do I want something more than this? Do I NEED something more than this? Is this all right for now? It’s easy. I just need you to find this thing in me that I’ve been I’m searching for but isn’t that irresponsible, it’s probably unhealthy.

I think I’m hoping a Nicholas Sparks ending for Twin Peaks’ Laura Palmer—what I want is something more simple than I care to admit.

I think too much, I say this again and unlock my phone.