I’m waiting for my husband to become a millionaire so I can quit my job. Not that I hate it—most days—but I’d much rather be a housewife, and I know I’ve set feminism back a century with that statement, and though I love to cook, I hate to clean, and you really need to have the “right” husband to desire to be his servant without it belittling your worth, and I believe I’ve snatched him. He respects my autonomy, doesn’t command submission, didn’t even make me change my last name, and he supports my dreams of being a writer, which is the true reason for why I want to stay at home, because what I crave most is time, less time wasted making a conglomerate richer, more time curled in a corner of my loveseat, pencil and notepad in hand, creating the worlds that play like films on my brain during strategy meetings and scribbling the words that flood my thoughts as I edit the writings of authors who’ve fulfilled their destinies while mine remains indefinitely on hold. So if it means taking a little more care in vacuuming and mopping floors, in washing and drying and setting his clothes out for the morning, in preparing the bacon he brings home by five each evening for dinner after a long day’s work, with a kiss on the lips and words of affirmation, I will do it, and after dinner, I will brew him chai and sit him in my lap and massage his scalp, and between his sips and his futile attempts to not fall asleep, I will tell him of my day, between the dusting and the folding and the rearranging of furniture, how the stories poured from my head and flowed through my arm and bled onto the page in the ink from the pen that I held in my hand, and he’ll nod, though I’m sure he’s only nodding off, so I’ll put him to bed and lay my head on his chest and listen to his heartbeat slow as he finally drifts to sleep, and when his breathing becomes rhythmic, I’ll close my eyes and dream of the plays I plan to pen tomorrow.

© 2022 Nortina Simmons