after Amelie (2001) dir. Jean-Pierre Jeunet

I may not have bones made of glass, but I am
unbearably lonely. But my heart is brittled and
badly taped together. I want my life to be
a French movie. [The goldfish bowls teeming
with whimsy, the ducklings made of clouds
pattering into a pond-blue sky. The narrator
introducing me while the camera dances in
on me lounging in my midi skirt: Wanda is an
introvert with a lot of big feelings. She dislikes crying
in public and men who yell and the machines at
the dentist’s office that squeal ditties into her teeth.
She likes dresses with built-in pockets, collecting the little
slips of destiny stuck between fortune cookies, and
trying new strawberry lemonades in all the restaurants
all over town.] Could you imagine? The reveries
dripping out of scarlet and gold wallpaper?
I wish to live in tenderness, forever blooming
in my own affections. Everyone thinks love is
screaming, bleeding fiery red, but it is green,
soft like sage or lush like forest. I want a love so
incurably soft, I won’t ever recover. I want a hand
to hold in the cafe, a neck to bury my face in
on the back of a motorbike. I want to believe in
miracles and honeymoons and forevers every day,
and cry at the thought of somebody keening at
my funeral. The long-distant recollection of a great
youandme. Our pictures scattered like flower petals
under all the photo booths in this city,
encased in memory for all time.