“

I used to shrug girls off who had hope chests,
glory boxes, bottom drawers
full of baby clothes
and magazine clippings of pots and pans.
I thought it was some secondhand travesty,
a mess of mothers teaching daughters how to be mothers,
not how to be people.
I thought that would never be me.
My mother gave me a hope chest
and I filled it with all the things I didn’t want to look at anymore:
photos of my parents when they were still together,
birthday cards from dead relatives,
childhood ballerina jewelry boxes,
a sock puppet,
a homemade wand fashioned for a Harry Potter movie premiere.
I thought: “You can’t teach me to be like you.
You can’t teach me to want things I don’t want.”

Now I have a Pinterest Board filled with tea kettles
and rice cookers, you know, for “later”.
I have a pile of travel brochures under my bed.
I realized that every book I buy that doesn’t have room on a shelf
is piled up from the floor to the ceiling
waiting for that dream bookshelf in a place of my own.
I met a girl in Melbourne whose hope was too big for a chest.
She had boxes in her family’s garage
of teapots and mixers
and everything she was going to line her apartment with
when she got out.

I’m starting to think that my whole room might be a hope chest
for a writing desk and a kitchen of my own.
Space of my own.
The other day I bought a duvet cover for a king sized bed
and tucked it away in the back of my closet.
I am twenty-three and even on the days I don’t want it to,
my whole life reeks of hope for a future
where I get out of bed in the morning instead of the afternoon
and I match my socks
and I always make time to cook my own meals.

One day I might have a box full of baby’s onesies
in yellow and green, you know, just in case.
But right now
I have a box of unused notebooks for the novels I have yet to pen.
And I think that’s all right.
I think that’s okay.

I think that the first step to loving the life you have made for yourself
is knowing that you want it.

I am twenty-three
and I drank four cups of coffee today instead of eating breakfast
but I have a heart bursting at the seams with wanting,
lungs full of unused air.
I love other people with every inch of myself.
My whole life is a hope chest.

”