Transactional

See, I play life as a clever girl would. Idle yet astute.

When I can bear to be sweet, I give as much as I can stand. So please enjoy my little gifts as I offer them. I am not transactional. My freedom comes from expecting nothing. My spirit never has to be untangled.

Only the clever girls know this; the old tired game never starts if we don’t play. Expectations. Dreams. Hope. We’re too smart for the sticky sweet trifecta; none of it is pure.

Now let it be dead and done with, darlings. Dead and done with.

Still, despite my best efforts to erase him, I still wish I could collect him somehow - you must know the one I’m talking about - not to trap him, but so we could be known to each other.

He has brought me a peace that I have yet to create on my own terms. So if there was enough left of him somewhere, and he offered me his hand, I’d be willing to hold it and consider us a different sort of gift that be our new kind of freedom.

Just this once.