What women want
Ask women what they want and the tenderness is devastating
Some time ago, women started telling me what they want. It began to happen at parties, over a little wine, then in the back of taxis, on the internet, on airplanes, in the sweaty line for the restroom at dive bars. I love hearing what women want. It’s like mapping the inside of a tulip. Flamed and throaty, impossibly sweet.Â
Honestly, the only thing I want to write poems about anymore.
Ask women what their tiny, ruby-eyed desires are and their answers will ruin you for all other questions.
One woman tells me she just wants a man to come over and watch cartoons with her, have good sex and get a little high. Another craves burnt orange linen sheets. Another longs to sleep in the sunlight with no alarm clock. Another dreams of a camper van and a full tank. Another wants to stay. Another wants her dead mother’s texts back so she can read them in the dark. Still another wants a kiss on her forehead. Another wants one on the inside of the thigh. And yet another wants multiple kisses on her clavicle—gathering like tiny blue moths.Â
One woman, who breaks my heart, says she very much wants a tattoo of a lavender plant on her left bicep. Another woman is hungry. She doesn't know where all the hunger comes from but she wants homemade dumplings, Sunday donuts, a runny, smutty egg.Â
Another woman blushes and shrugs a little. She only longs for her lover to hand her a piece of toast. Just the way she likes it—both buttered and jammed.Â
What do you want? Tiny or big—tell me in the comments. Get so specific it pinches a little.
P.S.
My book, Instructions for Traveling West, is finally available for preorder. Preordering lets bookstores know to stock an upcoming book and it signals to publishers that this is an author readers want to keep writing. It means the most. <3
.
I want the baby that I lost before it was finished baking but not before I fell soul-crushingly in love with them, the size of a blueberry. I want to lay with them on my chest with the sun streaming in the window. Since I can't have that baby, I want to make, carry and have their little brother or sister, feel the weight of them on my chest, the weight only a sleeping baby can produce, full and utterly trusting of their whole selves. And place a little blueberry on their back so I can be holding both.
I want a pair of men’s striped cotton poplin pajamas. I want layers of gold necklaces that I collect slowly, over years. I want to be independently wealthy.
I want to eat strawberries, warm from the sun, that I’ve just picked. I want to eat the middle out of each bun in a tray of fresh baked cinnamon rolls. I want to lick the melted cream cheese frosting from my fingers.
I want to feel the skin on my grandmother’s hands. I want to hear her voice one more time. I want to visit my childhood home and just cry until all the poison is gone. I want my father to love me the way I need to be loved. I want to know how I need to be loved.
I want to own a small house with a big yard. I want to plant a garden and design my kitchen. I want roots. I want to feel a strong sense of place. I want to watch my daughter play in the flowers. I want my daughter to stay this perfectly delicious age forever.
I want 12 hours of uninterrupted sleep in a cool, pitch-black room in a bed that’s all mine.
I want to feel sexy and desired. I want to know what I want and be unafraid to ask for it. I want to believe that I’m capable of and deserving of pleasure. I want to be uninhibited.
I want to be open, soft, tender. I want to be strong and confident. I want to be held like a baby.