With My Hands Open

August. 2008. I was walking down Michigan Avenue with Kay. I wore my Cubs tee. He sported Wilco. Culturally appropriate. A spongey-top brunette hustled out of a Columbia building. She eyed my guy. My arm was linked in Kay's, and I gripped his bicep, a little tighter.

But years later I know if they were Meant to be I should have held my open palm on the small of his back, pressed it forward. Like Look. Look. This is this person, and if you two are better together, then please be so. It will only hurt me
to find out later.

And I have tried to move through this world with haaaaaaaands open. My fifth week improv intensive instructor would smack his hands across our arms if we crossed them. Mid-sentence even--SMACK. Don't close yourself off, we learned. I take it to heart. I try not to cross anything.

Rejection is a good thing. It is a clear communication that we have not found what we are looking for yet. Backwards--the place we seek has shut up. But, still. It's not it's not you it's me. It's just not, and that's a valuable foothold.

My first rejection letter is in my scrapbook. I sent a literary journal a lame short story. It wouldn't have felt right to have been accepted. Oh sweet Jesus, the embarrassment of knowing that drippy narrative was Fifel-style Somewhere Out There.