bridal daydreams

embarrassing myself

Keep thinking about weddings. Wish I could be a bride. Think it’d be cute to have all my bridesmaids wear white, so everyone can feel like a bride. Doubt it will ever happen; never even gone on a date. Never been in any kind of relationship. Still daydream. There’s a book of poems I love called Salad Anniversary by Machi Tawara (trans. Juliet Winters Carpenter); many of them are about love, but according to the afterward, “Tawara has no real lover.” It’s all made up. I think that’s why I feel such a connection to her poetry. Her tanka are daydreams like mine.

I’d never be able to put those kinds of daydreams in any poem or story, though. Even admitting them here makes me feel silly and vulnerable. I avoid putting any kind of romance in my own work. Not because I don’t want to, but because I wouldn’t know how. Anyone reading it would know it isn’t real. Someone as talented as Tawara can make those kinds of daydreams feel real, but not me. I’d just expose my naivety and lack of imagination. I can only conceive of very simple things when it comes to this. Faint strokes of ink, like being held or kissed. How do people become couples? How can people know that another person likes them? How do relationships bud and blossom. No idea.

Still going to daydream. Still going to picture myself and all my bridesmaids in matching white dresses.