Dear Instagram

How could I not love you? Your speech bubbles and hearts laid out in neat mathematical patterns.  I love your gridwork lives in their perfect little squares: the baby strapped to your chest at Target, your pans crusted with mashed potatoes on that compact apartment stove.  You are on a beach surrounded by ducks and the sand has all these divots from the heels of your feet. I love your dogs: the terriers and mastiffs, legs splayed out on the linoleum, curved tongues and studded collars and pink and white Hello Kitty pet sweaters.

I want to live your lives, wear a green peacoat on a Chicago street, snow in my pixie haircut. Or maybe we are rehabbing the kitchen in an old farmhouse the knives clinging to a magnetic strip, pots hanging from the salvaged beams.  We are keeping goats and chickens.  We are drinking wine in shady bars, dancing with our arms raised, sweat on our backs.  Your lives are beautiful and I want to steal them, nose rings and all.  I want to bend my knees with abandon.  I want to wear that hilarious Christmas sweater with its knitted birds and tiny pom poms.  I envy you, with your ear flap hat and your pint of dark stout.

I am watching you get drunk and fall in love and cut your hair and have babies and go to work and grill pork chops and get divorced and spill your coffee on your favorite shirt.  I am watching your car break down. I am watching you at Enterprise Rent-A-Car.  I am watching you punch holes in the wall and start a Paleo Diet and break down and eat a box of Hostess Zingers.  I know that last week you went to Peoria Illinois and visited your grandmother with the apricot hair and the pleated lavender pants and later you posted a selfie wearing her pearls with an exaggerated cupid's bow drawn on your top lip.

I love your tattoos, your family photos, your homemade Nutella Cupcakes with buttermilk and sprinkles.  I am with you on your cigarette breaks and your trips to Walgreens for whiskey and condoms.  You posted a lit candle and pancakes and your black cat asleep in a cardboard box.  You cut your finger today, glossy bead hanging from the tip like something from a fairy tale.  All you are missing is the spindle.