I’m so siced about the Barbie movie. I just watched the latest trailer. I felt a fluttering in the stummy.

Peter’s birthday was May 1st. “What do you want for your birthday?” I’d asked.
“A flash for my iPhone,” he said. “Your phone already HAS a flash,” I replied, helpfully.
“No,” he explained, “a professional, external flash - they’re much more subtle and variable.”
“What are you going to take pictures of?” I asked. “You,” he said, smiling slyly.
“Me!?” I said, with a wrinkled nose, somewhat alarmed. “You don’t take pictures of ME.”
“Not usually,” he admitted, “but we’re going to Paris and the snaps will look better with a flash.” “Just ME?” I asked, “What about some ussies?” “We’ll take snaps of us, but you’ll have savage new pics for your poetry sites.” So, Peter got his flash and he’s taken a baZillion pix.

“Smile,” click, (iPhones don’t always click, so the click’s a writer’s dramatic effect)
Peter takes bursts of 50 pix at a time and only one in fifty turns out looking good (my opinion).
“Look this way,” click “toss your hair,” click. Apparently salads and my hair are better ‘tossed.’
So now we’re in Paris, but before we can take our tourist pic, I must lean over, like I’m going to throw up and comb my hair forward, so when I flip it back, it will appear fluffy.

“Look sad, look happy, try not to look so drunk, look ****,” he asks. “You’re kidding,” I replied. I exist only in his view finder.
“Just part your lips slightly and look vacuous,” he advises.
“Can I DO both at once?” I asked, as if challenged by a scientific equation.
“Don’t roll your eyes,” he said. Today, he was ‘the serious artist’. I’d never want to be a model.
Finally, I’d had enough constant photography and I just started looking moody. Peter seemed not to notice.

I read somewhere that when you smile, the activated muscles of your face actually improve your mood. Or something like that. Anyway, I’m trying to deepfake myself and smile my way to happiness. I ordinarily think of myself as tough, but lately, I’m soft.

A Yale counselor once told me that sometimes we tell ourselves a story and we just hold on to that version of things until it feels true. I have to stop thinking I’m on the edge of a deep, blue loneliness. I need to get on a metaphysical bike and ride away from my sad-self.

Later, when we’re back at the hotel, Peter was reading in the living room and I was lying on the bed, watching another Heraclee Beach, sapphire and ruby, sundown through the hotel windows. Peter came looking for me. He had a book in one hand, his place saved with his index finger.

“What are you doing?” He asked, lightly. “Want to go out to dinner or get room service?”
“I’m thinking thoughts.”
“What kind of thoughts? He asked, taking a seat on a desk chair he’d rolled over. Now I’m watching his face and he’s watching mine.
“You know how, everyday, at school, we tell each other everything that happened?” Peter nodded. “Which, of course,” I’d continued, “is impossible, but it’s as if we’re having experiences just so we could discuss them later - share them. It’s like, when we aren't together, it isn’t real life.”
“So..” he said, verbally prodding me on.

My voice felt thick, like it knew I wouldn't say things right. “Well, I’m two me’s now, I’m split right down the middle. Before you, things were easy. I was becoming Dr. Me, I had one goal, things were simple,” I shrugged, “but now, there's the me that’s going to be a doctor and the me that needs you.” I can’t seem to take my eyes off his face.

He touched my foot and wiggled it a little. “You don’t have to figure out the future right NOW, Mz overachiever.” He said in his soft, western drawl, “You can’t wrestle the future into orderly submission, like a chemistry test - we don’t have enough data (says mr. physics). Anyway, don’t we have forty or fifty years to figure it out?”
Suddenly, my head felt clearer than it had for days. I chuckled. I may have had my hand over my mouth and a smile was so big it hurt my face.

“You were very patient to put up with me today,” I said, turning slightly and quietly serious.
“You be you,” he said, smiling bigly back, “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Then I got serious. “Do you think we can find barbecue?”
“But of course!” he said, in a fake French accent, like Lemiure, in ‘Beauty and the Beast.’

A night only lit by a tv screen
and movies we didn’t watch.
A kiss shared in confidence,
and my fingertips on your neck.
An exhale of pleasure, followed by a smile,
and butterflies in my stummy, as your hands run through my hair.
A night that scared me in the most beautiful way,
And a girl to share it with makes me feel so alive.