Ten Things I Want That Have Nothing to Do With Being Sensible

Some lists belong on the fridge door, held by a magnet shaped like a lemon: milk, stamps, call the plumber. This is not that list. This is the one I write on the back of an envelope at 2 A.M., in pencil, because pencil lets you lie a little and then change your mind. I want a dance floor with no audience. I want a train ticket bought on impulse. I want a perfume nobody will recognize.

I want someone to read me a paragraph from a book they love, badly, because they are too excited to pace themselves. I want a hotel room with a window that opens. I want to be called by my full name in a tone that suggests I am about to be in delightful trouble. Notice that none of these require a five-year plan or a spreadsheet.

I want to eat dessert first and not narrate my guilt about it. I want a long, ridiculous afternoon in bed with the shutters half closed and rain doing its slow percussion on the roof. I want a man, or a woman, or honestly just a person with good hands and a better sense of humor, to look at me across a crowded table as if the table were optional.

The eighth and ninth items are private, and the tenth is simply 'more of this feeling,' which is the vaguest and most honest entry of all. Sensible Daniela would cross it out. Midnight Daniela underlines it twice and draws a small, smug star beside it, because wanting without a justification is one of the last great luxuries.

Do not mistake this for recklessness. I pay my bills, I return library books, I own a very sturdy umbrella. But a grown woman is allowed a secret drawer of appetites. If you would like to be tempted by stories that understand that, try The Secret That Could Break Rome on TheFriend, where longing is the whole plot and nobody apologizes for it.

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