dear men who might at some point in the future

dear men who might at some point in the future be genuinely interested in me,
please find enclosed a list of my long-fought but still too easily identifiable weaknesses:

when confronted with stage fright, i am incapable of speaking in grammatically correct sentences;
i blow my nose in a very un-ladylike elephant dame manner;
i've inherited a sort of innate tendency to melancholy that sometimes spend the whole day rendering me incapable of movement,
additionally stifling every attempt i pursue at smiling;

it is a frequent occurrence that i laugh too much,
drawing the attention of people around me on to the very low voice i have
which technically has always made me a tenor;
i have been told that i snore when my nose resembles rudolph the reindeer's at winter-time;
sometimes i shower for more than the socially acceptable twenty minutes,
just to be sure that my skin doesn't forget the feeling of rain until the next day;

my whole life, i've been incapable of eating any kind of food with chopsticks elegantly;
i am usually awake when i should be sleeping soundly,
surrounded by all the thoughts i haven't had the time to dwell upon during the day;
evening-time loneliness is a close friend of mine,
and it cannot be defeated by anyone, only ever shoved away for a while;

permanently, i try not to be shy, but make the impression of being an entirely different person whenever i fail;
i am allergic to unhappy endings that coincidentally also happen to be unfair,
and often daydream about correcting them;
in my opinion, there's no such thing as not-so-good friends,
because either you are or you aren't;

i worry about every word i say and the ripples they might create,
about not showing enough respect towards amazing people,
about how something i did might drive people i cling on to farther away from me,
about double meanings understood the wrong way,
about how the things i should do take over my thoughts and won't let me breathe,
about how i'm still not able to forgive myself for my own past stupidity.

i smile at cinnamon and daisies,
at the beautiful crinkles around somebody's eyes,
at too much infectious affection,
puppies and impeccable literature;
i wave at security cameras,
secretly take care of my worn-out eye make-up in the elevator,
hate buying shoes,
tend to burst into song while doing some of my miserable cooking,
and can't hold back my words if i come to understand that i love you.

Laura Tavasse was born in Vienna and is stubbornly holding on to the idea of writing a book one day. Meanwhile, she spends her days studying something completely different, frowning at people on the evening train and petting the neighbour’s cat. Twitter: @venetiana_.