“The Four Types of Conditionals” by Sandra Jensen

The Four Types of Conditionals

If I had learned to breathe, I might not have this knot in my stomach. If I had an actual knot in my stomach, I might discover how to untie it. If I had never gotten bitten by a tick, I’d be dancing right now. If I were dancing right now, my heart would beat and I would breathe, and that knot would unravel, pooling around my feet like a snake, a fanged cobra, the kind in baskets weaving to the charmer. If I were charming, I would wear a smile even if I didn’t mean it and I’d reach out my hand to yours, my wrist tinkling with the sound of a silver bracelet with tiny bells and shoes and a dog, and if I were a dog, I would be scampering over gorse-dotted hills, my eyes on the white fuzz of a sheep in flight and then I would leap, leap into the clouds and settle there, my nose tucked under my paw. If I had a Paw, I would be living in the Southern United States and chewing tobacco – that is, if I were a man. If I were a man, I’d be an accountant. A recluse. A sculptor. A lover of women, a man who had an eye for beauty. I might shoot, and I’d shoot well, a bow, an arrow, a .38 special. I would probably end up alone, on a mountain, breathing. That mountain, bare of gorse, smelling of thyme and honey. I would retire to the Mediterranean, to Majorca, as my father thought he might, only he didn’t, he changed his mind and ended up in Crete, retiring forever after driving his Volkswagen into an olive tree. I was in the car, my seven-year-old body left unscathed, unlike my heart. Oh, to lean my great body into a firm and welcoming easy chair, a cigar in my hand, thinking on a life free of tribulation, a fulfilled life, contentment billowing in my belly, rising, falling, that breathing again, a whiff of smoke, a good single malt. My woman dancing before the fire as it licks shadows across her pale skin. If I were that woman, I would be naked but for a silk scarf of the lightest blue, the colour of my husband’s eyes as he watches me without a blink, but blink he does because I slip my bare feet into a pair of Doc Martins and my bare body into sturdy but comfortable clothes and stride out, out, reborn and into a life limited only by my imagination.