tinder bio

emotionally unavailable twenty-something seeking fun-loving person interested in hiking, bottomless mimosas at brunch, and being judged by my friends in the group text until i decide if i like you

my bio is two truths and a lie format— i hate hiking, am allergic to orange juice, and mute group chats with the zeal of a librarian hushing school kids, and all this will come out on the second date

we could be meeting in a dingy bar tonight i could be escaping to the bathroom halfway through the first drink to call a friend and fake an emergency but we are both on tinder instead stuck in a mindless k-hole of meaningless swipes right and left

1969

the sitcoms will tell you that American love is hating your wife my grandpa will tell you different. he knew that he would marry Mary Musso when he saw her in the bleachers at a basketball game and the next half-century must have flashed before his eyes

flash forward to the realization that i could get married right now and still might not live to see the half century of wedded bliss, and i might not want to

the receipts of my beating heart thus far are in a few faded sweatshirts, borrowed and never returned trips up and down the west coast to visit a lover, and several love letters that will go unanswered

maybe the real proof of passage runs through my veins like a rube-goldberg machine the legacy that my grandpa set in motion so long ago that children still came home with the streetlamps

maybe 1969 is all i will ever become a product of the generational dust that floats over vineyards by the highway and coats my great grandfather’s rusted-out tractor still sitting out behind the barn our blood runs red as pressed fermented grapes and some facsimile of DNA sits, barrel-aged in green glass bottles or snakes itself into the velvet wallpaper so that i can picture one single babbaluci, sliming its way up the wall

and if i myself am doomed to never find love to stand forever at the end of an empty aisle instead of walking down it there is an indulgent smile on my face knowing those before me did it with enough conviction for generations to come