bone of wishes

hope springs eternal when there is a wishbone to be pulled upon, a birthday candle to be blown out, a fortune cookie to be opened. it doesn't take a scientist to know that belief in these...traditions? superstitions? wives tales? what are they?... is silly and not founded in reason. but yet the appeal of placing your destiny into an act of chance -- into how the dried bone of a bird carcass will snap when you pull on it -- was too great for this logician to resist.

it's quite a morbid act, when you stop and think about it, and i wonder how it came about. regardless, i find that these little glimmers of hope are all i have sometimes. oases in the desert. morsels in the famine. just a little something to keep me going. the other week i got chinese take-out, and they gave me not one, not two, but three fortune cookies. i rationed them, saving them for days when i felt like i needed a message sealed in a cookie to tell me what to do, or that everything would be OK (in bed). because i understood on some level the draw of taking fate out of your own hands, and putting it in the hands of the supernatural.

do i really think what i wished for when i pulled on the wishbone will come true? and that whatever merritt was wishing for won't come true? in that instant, when the bone broke in my favor, was my life altered, set upon the course that will grant my wish? does it matter? is the real gift, the real wish that was granted here, hope? a spark to keep me going? to not give up. to not see my outlook as bleak? to believe that good things will happen to me? that i will not be alone? that i am lovable and capable of being loved (which are two different things, mind you)?

maybe, when i was wishing for someone to love me, i really just wanted to love myself.