Promise Me an Olive Garden of Dreams

I've been back in the city for approximately two and half weeks. I have forgotten everything I know about parking lots, but still remember the deep of the deep woods. Sitting in the car while running errands for the family, I felt so much like my "other self." That self that is out in the America of our minds, the self that lights the home fire, picks up the kids from school, the self that you would have been if you had married that first love, that second love, the self that would drive and wonder what her other self was like writing poems in the non-wooded city of windows. I was having a hard time that day, and then the image of the Olive Garden made me smile. As if it was some kind of castle of unattainable normalcy. All-you-can-eat American dreams for everyone.