Sometimes I take my life and mold it,
shape it like old, cracked Play-Doh,
trying to fit it into the clandestine reams of paper
that hide in fortune cookies.
I am dying to make those sweet-talking slips,
enticing with their idealism,
ring true,
if only so I know
that I am not falling through the fingertips of fate,
unabashedly sifted aside like the grains of sand
in life's hourglass.
I just want to believe that
someone, somewhere out there
knows my story,
how my life is going to play out:
maybe like a horror movie or a soap opera
or with the urgency of an old black-and-white newsreel
on those little paper slips.

I want those faded, blue-inked words,
probably printed a million times before,
to tell me what I want to hear,
but also tell me in truth.
I want them to whisper their crumbling fortunes only to me;
maybe it's too much to ask,
but I need them for my own.
I want to believe that
the ones I love will never let me down,
that confidence will take me far,
and that good things will come my way.
But those precious, honeyed predictions,
left to be devoured when greasy take-out food is finished,
leave me empty,
because they are vague, ambiguous,
and I do not always fit the words.