Skylovia Parentheses

Maybe I’ll change my name, not sure to what. Skylovia or Parentheses, perhaps, maybe both: Skylovia Parentheses will not do things I do.

She’ll sing instead of dance, and she will love to clean, find joy in dusting and vacuuming and folding laundry. Taking out the trash will delight her, and she’ll eat beets and drink black coffee, gin and tonics, and sauvignon blanc. She’ll hate the water but love to run.

Slow jams and love songs will be the music of her soul, and Olive Garden will be her favorite restaurant. She’ll only color inside the lines in HOA approved colors after she pays her taxes and makes the bed.

Her jewelry will be organized; she’ll keep up with her diamond rings and have an entire closet of nothing but shoes, which will always be orderly.

She won’t like bourbon, beer, the Allman Brothers or The Smithereens. She’s never been backstage. She dropped out of school in 9th grade and hates reading. Valentine’s Day is her favorite holiday, and she thinks good sheets are a waste of money.

Skylovia Parentheses hates spring and loathes autumn. Trees annoy her, and she prefers lakes to rivers, swimming pools to oceans. In her spare time, she makes up math problems to solve, does imaginary statistics in her head to calculate the popularity of gummy bears on Mars in the next century.

All of her pets are reptiles—lizards, iguanas, non-poisonous snakes. She drives a brand-new car, trades it in every year. She doesn’t give a shit about her job, but it pays a ton of money.

She never understood what the big deal about sex was. She loved her boyfriend, but he’d never given her an orgasm, and she’d only ever been with two other men, her long-term relationships in her twenties. Circular arguments are the only kind she engages in, and policy for policy's sake is her favorite thing in the world. She's a Deontologist, but she doesn't know it--thinks philosophy is a waste of time.