What would I do with 19 million?
I’d buy a home, for a start.
No longer will I wait for some man to agree
To live in a pathetic shoebox apartment,
Or to be swindled into living in a condominium–
And pay extra for much less space.
No, I wish for a bungalow with endless rooms,
To build a cat superhighway, a library,
And a bedroom with fluffy blankets.
Maybe that will leave me with 16 million,
And that will allow me to leave a sealed letter
On my employer’s desk,
And I won’t have to bear the burdenof soulless drudgery,
But I wonder if I ever had oneto begin with.
Enough money to start my own publishing company.
To rent an office for the sake of it–
But staff can work from home.
Time to write my novels.
Personal language tutors at my beck and call.
A butler.
A sleek ducati that winks at me in the sun.
A KitchenAid stand mixer.
A Dyson vacuum cleaner.
A bespoke wardrobe full of costumes.
All the Apple products–lookin’ at you, iPad.
Oh yeah and a PS5.
I will be a dragon that arranges my hoard.
But all I want is a time machine
To go back to that day, that very sunny day,
Before things got complicated
Where we held hands and looked at the bluest sky–
And that somehow, even though I felt poor, talentless and ugly,
You saw something in me,
Something that money cannot buy.