In a dream, in a life, in a future yesterday, the world is completely different from one lily-pad step I took on the fourth of May. 21 years spent ogling these maybes, these otherwheres, these fantastical infinite people and these wild infinite loves and intense infinite failures I could have had. I spend much time pondering them, but never wistfully, just thoughtfully. I regret none of the nowhere I am, so I wouldn't wish it away, but because of my reckless mind I wonder regardless of reason and logic.

But today, I wondered what if I stopped letting myself wonder and started letting myself dream.

I spent most of those maybe 21 years locked in a tower were maybes were the only hopes I had. But, below the tower as I now am, maybe maybe isn't all I have anymore. Maybe yes can be my new maybe. Maybe why not can be it.

As a writer, by condition i ask what could have been, what maybe could happen, but I struggle with why nots. With the bravery of a careening carousal ride or the average person of my age. I have let an inkling suspection that the world may **** me deter from all adventure. I've worked on it, but the acidic pinpricks on my skin make me cower like all alien-fearers should.

But funnily, I feel like an alien. So why not brave the danger by brandishing a hook and baring my own blood?

Today, I listed all the maybes I could be, and decided I should try some. Maybe I won't do them all. Maybe I'll hate them. But maybe I shouldn't give a ****. Maybe I should stop looking back and seeing all the turns I took that culminate in a loss of some wild experience, and look towards what is happening and see the maybes that lie before me.

Maybe I could have been a crack addict. Maybe I could have fallen in love with a different him/her. Maybe I could have drunk acid and be staring at my skeleton bones from the smooth waters of hell.

But  didn't.

So maybe, instead, I could be a yoga lover, and maybe my hair could be green, and maybe i could get over my fears of being even a little bit cool.

Just maybe.

I was born under the earth in the eye of a blizzard, stormy from the first.
I took my first step off the edge of a rabbit hole and my next underwater.
I spoke first in melodies, finding the average tongue a little too heavy.
I breathed through flower petals, filtering the toxins of being human.
I made friends with the firelight that kept me and the shadows awake.
I watched soft skin of beating hearts hide under layers of organs, lonely.
I saved my fingerprints each time they fell off, to collect the marks of me.
I climbed pebbles to help them hope they could one day be mountains.
I screamed at the sky to see if it ever let itself be free to scream back.
I toppled ice cream sodas for their reign need make way for push-pops.
I slept in tide pools, giving my luminescent skin as a starfish nightlight.
I danced in the darkness of caves, making friends with bats over men.
I soared through bedrock, so the lava monsters had an ally with eyes.
I feared every twitch of life before me, but observed in stoic fascination.
I turned into a humming black bird to meet the leaves giraffes eat.
I wished on shooting satellites, because stars had enough burdens.
I dreamed of otherwheres, of thistle branches with tiger lily eyes.
I vacationed with fireflies when the moonlight asked me to care for them.
I wandered the world as a written ghost, hiding behind trees until I say:
I am.

Well, its been two years since the night I sat up late dreaming of other worlds that seemed so far away.

Yet here they are, nearly before me.

Its crazy, looking between that moment and now. I was honest and hopeful, yet all those things I wished for seemed worlds away.

Well, worlds away just turned into 3 months.

I've finished my first real novel. I'm a third through my new one. The inevitability of me being a real author is sharp and bright and awe-inspiring. I've written things that make people think and feel and hopefully have the ability to make a difference.

I'm running across the country with that man I love. Its happening. I am in love. I feel forever in love. I no longer sit and question the maybes; I feel he is for me, as long as he is who he is and breathes on this earth and walks beside me. And I soon get to wake up to him every morning for as long as we're together. Its something else, I tell you.

Wonderland has gotten kinder. I have become stronger, and things are figuring themselves out. I'm figuring myself out. Its new and terrible and great and exciting. The world of Wonderland is before me, and I am no longer afraid.

I wanted these so many things, and I'm fingertips away from them. They're mine. Its jaw-dropping. Its nearly a surprise.

Except it isn't. It logically feels that way, but in my heart it only feels right. Now, I have my writing. I have my novels. I have my love. I have my wonderland. I have my future.

All the things I ever wanted are mine, and its more than I ever thought I would get. My dreaming isn't just dreaming anymore. Everything I dreamed of is real, and you know what?

Its better than I dreamed. Far better.

My feelings on the world are a complex dichotomy. If I could control the world, my rule would be to control nothing. To give freedom and agency to everyone and let every culture and kind shine as they do and **** superiority and focus on growth, not *******.

But, not all people aren't as communally minded as that. And though in theory I could change the rules, I can't change people.

In its own way, that's beautiful. The visceral strength and resiliency of humanity fascinates me, with the chaotic undertones that lie beneath every eye. I love the spectrum of pain and brilliance it brings. But it also makes a utopian world of understanding and lack of control impossible to keep people safe; because never will there be a human race that doesn't at least have some people craving absolute control.

I think this dichotomy within myself parallels my standing with humanity very well. There is something on most every end I can find fascinating: free will, selflessness, unpredictability, tenacity. But also I can never seem to be pleased with how humanity could be but never amount to.

Not that it gives me much trouble. I've always kept humanity at an arm's length, choosing books and stories over the flesh-bags in front of my face. The only thing I ever struggled with was not being normal with my human relationships, and trying to make my methods match.

My methods won't match because I might as well be an alien for all I care about directly interacting with humanity.

Yet, I love humanity, in a way. I could write about human transcendence and growth until I die. I am madly in love with human potential. But I don't love humans. I don't love a species that muscle arms its way into dominance and can be arrogant and small-minded. After all we've managed to accomplish, and we're still start wars over skin color and scapegoating? Its laughable, in a way.

I suppose I look at humanity as if I was an alien scientist. I have no way of measuring things or conducting research because I'm foreign, but I can see the greatness in their eyes and am floored by it. Yet I also see the violence in their eyes and am repelled by it. The most tragic, push and pull love of my life has been for this species.

I've learned lately I'm okay with being alien. But its strange to find a foothold in a world where I feel constantly at odds and different.

But I like strange, so I think its what works best.

Between humanity and me, things are complicated. Things are wonderful and painful and all worth the while in its own, ****** way. I suppose all I have is my words and I'll share them, and humanity can listen if it will. I hope it will. I hope it can help people who feel like aliens too, and maybe then being an alien and a human can be easier.

But for those things, we'll just have to see.

The wreckage is hard to stare at. I think some part of me knew I was flying a little too close to the sun, and that's what makes this even worse.

Picking up the pieces after a crash landing are some of the worst times, I believe. The crash itself is painful and confusing, but cleanup is just left with the pain and analytical assessment. How'd it fail? What went wrong? What should I have done better?

I've never loved crash landings, but as a person who's adept at doing them, at least they don't go too terribly. Doesn't mean I enjoy doing them, though. Doesn't mean I don't sometimes get the feeling I should get my pilot's license revoked.

Yet another crash landing, and my shoulders hurt and my hands ache. But its just another day.

I'm just tired today and I know its rational, but its so hard not to just throw all the blame on me and glare at this human vessel like its a disappointment. I should have known better. I should have worked harder. I should be the best pilot, not just the best crash lander.

But yet again, its just like any other day after a crash.

Perhaps tomorrow will be better.

There's some sort of magic between the eyes of a resting jaguar. Their languid yawn, opening the gaping maw that lies between their strong teeth, more energetic than their tired paws.

Still and regal, wearing muscles like fine silks, their fur like that final kingly cape and their ears their crown.

A zoo jaguar once met my eyes and in a deadlocked stare, saw the camera in my hands, and turned his head to pose. A prince always knows when to please his peasantry. As a pleased peasant, I snapped pictures and nearly cried at his serene posture behind a wall of glass. There was some sort of uncharted beauty in the way he spoke without words oversaturating his meanings. It was a way I wished to speak. He was a comrade behind glass, silent yet observant and knowing. Though my head might be a good fit for a maw, I nearly wanted to keep him close company.

The dark spots that adorn his body are the only betrayers of the fierce undertones of his monarchy. Well, except for the teeth, of course.

Though I try to unlock my gaze and detach from the gossamer threads that were beginning to tie, the jaguar eyes and jaguar prince incessantly seep into my brain, for when I close my eyes all I can see is theirs staring back at me. All I want is just one hand, a single touch, a gift to feel their crowns and robes, to experience the powerful royalty beneath their quiet eyes, even if being taken by their maw may end up being the price.

My affection becomes jarred by the human hand jostling my wrist, and I blink for the first time since seeing the posing feline prince. My head turns, trance averted, and I'm looked at with perplexion as my body has sidled up to the glass, and the Jaguar, now alert, is swinging its tail and staring in wonderment at me.

My eyes magnetize back to their rightful place, his green eyes on my green eyes, and I wonder what lives we would live like if I could see into his mind and know what's he's like. Perhaps we would be friends, or family, or hunters, or partners, in that other life.

Or, perhaps he'd want to eat me nonetheless.

One more camera shot of my jaguar prince, and a silent nod as he situates himself back to his pose. Restful, regal, serene. Turning away, I feel myself leave a part of me that always stays with him and taking that part of him that stays with me.

Every wild eye does, and our secret we will keep.

When I was 15 I had no real friends, and that was okay. Being shut up alone inside was fine as long as I didn't give myself time to think. I had some laughs, and I had classmates, and I wrote and wrote and wrote and it was alright.

But then the **** boy had to sing.

Not just musically, though god knows he did that wonderfully too. He sang to me with his weirdness and brains and odd duck humor that I relished in.

We even really met in a musical, as poetic as it is.

I spent every afternoon around him, and I thought he just laughed back at me in his confident, beautiful, lyrical way. I was a little in love with him.

One day I found myself shouting at him about being prying, and him at me for being secretive, and somehow it ended with me telling him that he was my secret. That the way I could close my eyes and picture the road map of his heart through the words that he sang was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

It was the first day I ever heard him stutter.

After some awkward verbal fumblings and confused wires, we collided, two insecure children thinking we were artistic adults. We saw ourselves as some grand creative romance when really we were two weird kids finding infatuation under bright stage lights.

After a few weeks more stumbling, and harsh words around, that initial fizzling collision just kept on colliding until our heads were jostled a little too well.

I broke his heart in a high school hallway, only a month after we began.

Like the artist he was, he poetically asked me for a final kiss before letting me go.

Also, poetically, it ended up not being our final kiss at all. But trust me, despite my desperation to try the collisions and passion again, he made sure that second final kiss really was the last.

That was the end of our love story.