a wish on the tip of my tongue, life-long health and wellness or success in my career, or sometimes for someone else to have discovered the lamp. But I head back to think more. I smoke and try to relax on the porch. I think it all through. I think everything over. And over.

I do not rush. I go to work. I take lunch breaks. I meet up with friends at the bar and talk about their hopes and dreams and jobs and complaints and girlfriends. I play my guitar and write lyrics. I meet a girl and fall in love. A friend dies. I get married. We have children. We have successes and failures. We watch our friends grow. I raise my son and daughter. I travel to Paris and South America. I go to the movies. I go to graduations and weddings. Celebrate birthdays and ring in new years. I come home and sit on the porch and think about what to wish for. I go down to the basement, time after time, but it’s too much pressure. I will never be able to go back on my wishes, revise them. I putter around and think. I stare at the night sky and wonder what they should be. But I just can’t pick. I cannot choose. But he’s always down there, under my home, in the cool dark basement, among the boxes of my family’s stuff I never sorted or removed, craning his neck, folding his arms over his chest, full of unimaginable power, waiting.