Breadcrumb #224
RADHIKA MENON
I checked my phone for the eighth time in half as many minutes. Ten minutes until we start and no sign of you yet. The bench outside of Bowtie Chelsea Cinema beckoned me, the printed paper tickets in my hands fighting against the wind. Our text conversation lay stale in my palm.
Then: three dots.
“I’m intoxicated”
If this was a test, I was sure to fail. I avoided an immediate answer, scared that my sudden anger would blow my chill girl cover. Up, up, up I scrolled — to my apologies for drunken advances on the night we met, which sat squarely next to your insistence that it was fine, or even funny. We flirted, we bantered, we planned this date. You told me that you had never been to a film festival; I felt special to be able to take you. Your very existence had excited me.
“Oh man, this will be fun haha. What’s your ETA?”
Casual and cool — that’s the persona I had decided on. Four minutes until the film started. The dots appeared almost immediately.
“Please forgive me. I promise I will make it up to you...but I’m taking a cab home.”
That heart-sinking feeling came alive in me. The time on my phone read 9:29 — still one minute left for you to take it all back. Sixty seconds for you to materialize, laughing “ha-ha” at your funny joke that had almost killed me. Just enough time for you to link your fingers between mine and drag me towards the door.
9:30. Showtime.
I settled into my seat, off to the left only four rows from the front. Isolated. I tried not to notice the couples peppered in the rows surrounding me, but all I could see was the hand-holding and shared buckets of popcorn. I pulled a half-drunk bottle of lukewarm water out of my bag and took a sip.
The movie had already begun when I realized it was a psychological thriller, something sure to give me nightmares. I hadn’t done any research. My thoughts easily wandered from the screen to your hands — how much they would’ve comforted my jumpy heart. I stayed through the credits and the conversation with the director. Justin Long was there. I was not.
“My thoughts easily wandered from the screen to your hands — how much they would’ve comforted my jumpy heart.”
I decided to walk from 8th Avenue to Park Avenue for the 6 train, thinking only of how you had left me tonight in stark contrast to when we met — that night when you drove me home and bought me pizza and kissed the top of my head as you put me to bed.
__
Sleep was a gift, separating me from my conscious thoughts. And in the morning, I felt the pangs of innocent hope again. Work dragged as I awaited your Apology Text that would be followed by a Rescheduling Text that would be returned by my Eager Text. I checked my phone meticulously.
Time moved at half-speed while I went through the motions of professionalism. Answer an email, press the home button on my phone; go to a meeting, and secretly check my screen for the hope of your name; dial into a call, then forget the world as I scroll through our text history. It had already become a ritual.
Soon my impatience got the best of me, and by noon, your clock had run out. I naively believed you were shaking off the last bit of an ugly hangover — a little nudge couldn’t hurt.
“So are you alive?”
Casual and cool, not even acknowledging that you had left me shivering on 23rd St. the night before. Meticulous became obsessive, and there was no sign of the three dancing dots.
The text made my anxiety worse. Time rolled onwards. 2pm, 4:30, 6 o’clock. I didn’t regret my text until the minutes kept passing and your silence stayed constant.
__
Four days passed before your name crossed my screen again, just in time to undo all of the work I had done to get it out of my head.
“Happy Sunday :) Have you realized how bad I am at texting yet?”
It wasn’t so simple, it shouldn’t have been okay, but I let it be. Even though you had made the effort to reconnect, I still took the lead in plan-making, as I had done before. I offered up the days of the week where I had endless post-work hours to spare; surely we could make something work?
But your schedule was less forgiving, obstacles at every turn. Still I tried and tried. And finally, I offered my white flag:
“How about you let me know when you’re free?”
I never saw those promising dots under your name again.
Breadcrumb #223
CLAIRE ZAJDEL
i know two places –
in one i learned to stand,
in the other i learned to
stand on my own.
the hominess of the Middle
is uncategorical and undefinable –
between the wild onions and
the queen anne’s, i
was laura ingalls and dependent
but free.
when you’re from the Middle, you
think ‘anywhere but here’ because
somewhere there must be
more to be than laura and her
field of weeds as far as you
can see.
on the East side there’s an ocean, but
no one notices it between the buildings
and the personalities. the city is a
cacophony, not like the one in the
Middle where everyone says ‘hello’.
everything has splendor, i noticed
at fourteen when we rode in that yellow
cab and saw the bodegas with all their
outdoor fruit.
‘it’s just like the movies’
(except, off camera where there’s
piss and garbage and ambition
that tears benevolent souls in two).
i wonder if it was the narrow
streets that made me ill or
maybe the passage of Time
reminding me that pretend is just
for children and that little
house costume doesn’t fit
anymore. faster and faster, until
i can’t see him,
Time, my measured friend
is changing. he’s more harried
now, like he’s caught
the quickness of those blue streets
and decided he’d better speed up
if he’s gonna make it to the top.
i call him
but he’s on the other line.
i just want to know where it is
i should live until i die.
call waiting is what
they spoke about at mass –
a space, not
safe or damned, just room for
old hope and second chances.
but nowhere is different, we are always
in fragments. in
the Middle we turn off our brain
while in the East we are served our
own heart for dinner. we can only keep
a little slice of ourselves in
this wide country.
i want to be whole, for Time
to dance in his metered way
again
so i can glue the
pieces of this forsaken land
together
with my sticky little life, and
maybe
hold it in my hands
and smile.
Breadcrumb #222
RON RIEKKI
The People in the Bible
weren’t always in the Bible.
Before that they were in Jerusalem
and Cleveland
or wherever.
I don’t know math very well,
but I know that there were twelve unsubstantiated apostles.
The twelve unsubstantiated apostles
ate a substantial meal
and it somehow got converted
into a ritual of transubstantiation,
but I’m too young to understand all this shit.
I just know that the people in the Bible
are trapped in the Bible
and Lot’s wife keeps getting turned into salt
and how much does it suck to be a condiment and, worse, to be called “Lot’s Wife”
your entire life
or your entire death
or whatever,
your entirety of being salt,
mythological salt, and you can’t even be as cool as mythological pepper
and you can’t even have your own name
and your husband has to be called “Lot,”
which is like having a husband named A Great Deal
or A Whole Boatload of Stuff
when you just want to be married to a Jacob
or an Emily
or a Mohammed
or an Aino.
How come there’s no Ainos in the Bible?
I had a great-grandpa named Aino
and ‘great-grandpa’ is a helluva long time ago.
My cheeks are starting to flush like a toilet thinking about all this.
I’m getting myself riled up like it’s the Trump fake election again.
I can’t even blink anymore without feeling like needing a drink
of red wine, blood red, with the stamp
of Jesus all over the bottle.
I went to a church yesterday, but the building had no answers for me.
It’s why when the Saami worship, we go outside, into the heart and lungs of nature
instead of being trapped in the tin cans of Christianity.
Breadcrumb #221
HAELE WOLFE
Entry 2:
The thing about the ocean is I use it like a mirror. Not a mirror mirror on the wall kind of situation but a second soul. Yes, mirrors are like that. Read a fucking book.
What else…I put parts of myself in them for safekeeping. I use them as doors.
People don’t do that anymore. They don’t use mirrors the way they should. The ocean, I mean. Think about it—not spread over all the deepest deep of the world, but tall. On end. Think about the ocean standing upward on the horizon. Opening, like a door. A mirror, I mean. Think about passing through.
We’re all water. The earth is mostly water. Frozen water, sky water, sea water, mirrors. Dry land is a joke. Just like dinosaurs or the ice age. Please, you’ve seen a wooly mammoth and thought the same thing I have. Right, ok. Like that ever existed.
Lately I’ve been writing at the mirror (I mean, the ocean). It’s hard but not impossible. I press my cheek or forehead against the surface and then push at the pad of paper till something comes out. I go diving. Not for pearls or anything. Not for anything that anyone would want. The left side of my face is beautiful at four o’clock in the afternoon. That orange and pink light? God, it purifies me. Smoothes me right out. The shadows round my eyes get deeper and darker and just a little lavender, till I look like one of those natural but not natural beauties with horse eyes and lips that everyone wants to eat. My skin is just golden, lips like goddamn petals. Goddamn.
I am beautiful. Not fuckable—beautiful.
Mostly the left side of my face. The left side of my chin is just heaven. The way it slopes up to my eyes and cheeks and the curved drop of my nose. I’m beautiful in the mirror. Not a great way to get writing done though.
“The shadows round my eyes get deeper and darker and just a little lavender, till I look like one of those natural but not natural beauties with horse eyes and lips that everyone wants to eat.”
The book is coming. No one is asking anymore, which is a good sign, because I know I’ll never get anything done unless I can be a dark horse about it. I like to come up from behind. I like to show up at my own funeral. I like it when they think I’ve already failed.
Note: water was calm today. Couldn’t see myself in the mirror.
Entry 3:
I want to ask how anyone gets anything done. I want to ask my mother, I want to ask my sisters, I want to ask and ask till my face turns blue and my tongue shrivels up, turns dead black.
I believe that names are promises. They must be, right? They must mean something. Even nothing means something.
The new medication breaks me up like this.
I think one thing:
How come the tides move like that against our boat ? How come the water is so gentle with me and so rough with my sisters? How come the sky and the waves in that order? How come everyone else is tethered? I’m aching for something but everyone just says shut up close your meat hole put a stopper in it again with the tears and the threats please come on we’ve heard it all before. Every door, closed.
And then the pill patrol comes in BOOM. Comes in CLAP CLAP CLAP. Break it up, break it up you crazy kids. You band of ruffians. You ragamuffins.
I hope that Molly makes green salad and fried chicken for lunch. I hope that Molly loves me even without her paycheck. Does she have children? Is Molly even her real name? Am I living The Little Princess out loud right now without realizing it? Maybe your house only feels grand when it’s not really yours. I hope that Molly loves me, god, I hope that somebody loves me, Jesus I’ll find the balls to give up if its any other way, man, I’ll start looking a pine boxes and picking out plots between the stone hills if you know what I mean. Shut up, we both know I’ll go out burning on the open water. Start practicing your archery, asshole.
CRASH. Bang. Ceasefire.
At the end of the day I have to slip through my notebooks to keep track of what my brain tried to string together. At the end of the day I have to say prayers and burn incense, otherwise my mother will get incensed and I’ll get burned by proximity. It’s a tricky fire to stoke, but one that I’m familial with. Imagine that every day. Imagine trying to put one foot after the other in the sand while the tide stinks and laughs at you and then comes for you with its tongue. I have a relationship with the Atlantic. I wouldn’t call it good or bad. I would call it the ocean.
Benjamin plays the piano soft and slow for me. He isn’t sad like the other boys. He isn’t trying to prove anything. I know because he doesn’t use cologne. He’s thoughtful and wears his hair in a ponytail. He’s sweet and knows that polo shirts don’t look good on anyone. He is the north star of my life. I know because every day I open my notebooks and there he is. Page after page of Benjamin. Benjamin on the ivories. Benjamin and the cats on the porch. Benjamin lugging water or carrying things up the stairs. Benjamin shucking corn and shelling peas. Benjamin going to the bathroom. Ok, well, that one is just a drawing of the bathroom door. But I know I meant to say that Benjamin is inside. I like when things are behind doors. I like watching and knowing and supposing. My whole life is about supposing. I Nancy Drew my life every day, why do you think I keep these journals? I’ve got to girl detective my way out. I’ve got to figure out the center of the maze. I’m not just another numbskull.
I don’t think I was ever a child. My arms and legs have always been just the right size, and none of my teeth ever fell out because I’m not careless like the others. I keep track of things. I make lists. I am a national treasure.
Benjamin lives at my house for one reason or another. For the same reason Molly does, I think. I pretend that it’s love he’s here for, but that may not be true. And anyway, it may be love but not from the right person. Like it would matter coming from anyone else. Whatever. I won’t say either way. I’m not a masochist. The way he plays the piano makes me want to fuck everything.
I don’t think that writers are supposed to be happy. I think that they are supposed to be alone.