Someday
William Alton

“Have you ever been in love?” she asks.

 “I guess.”

 She stares at me. I look down, keep my face close to my chest.

 “Not counting your mom,” she says.


“I know.”

 We walk in the park. Oaks and maples and elms and chestnuts rise over us, gnarled and bent. The sun is a smoldering orb.

 “I’ve been in love,” I say.

 “Good,” she says. “Everyone needs to be loved.”

 Young mothers stand guard over the children playing on the swings, climbing the jungle gym. They pay no attention to us.

 “I want kids,” she says.

 “Kids?”

 “Someday,” she says.

 “Okay.”

 “Right now I’m too young,” she says.

 “Yeah.”

 “But I think about it,” she says. “I think about it and I sometimes think that maybe now would be the right
 time.”

 “I don’t know,” I say.

 “I have to get through college first,” she says. “I have plans. The kids will come. Later, when I’m old enough.”

 I watch the grass twinkle in the wet sunlight. Mud pushes through it. The sidewalks are the color of ash. I light
 a cigarette and she makes a face.

 “What do you want to do?” she asks.

 “Me?”

 “What do you want to do when you grow up?”

 “I don’t know,” I say.

 She shakes her head.

 “No dreams?” she asks.

 “None.”

 “You have to want something,” she says. “Everyone wants something.”

 “Not me,” I say, but that’s not true. I want to feel something. I want something to fill me up when I’m empty
 and right now, I’m always empty.

  “I want you to have hopes,” she says. “Dreams. Aspirations.”

  “Someday,” I say. “Someday something will come to me.”
 
  She nods once and kisses me.

  “Here’s to someday,” she says.

  “Someday.”

 

---