Stop. Now focus in
on the sense that rolls
from your lips.
Right there, between
those bands of static
interference, there,
between sips of
white wine sangria
and a broken stream
of words.
Now rewind. Look,
there’s your form
bathed in grey, pointing
at the clear and obvious
present.
Now take it frame
by frame until you
see that shadowy
trace that drifts from
my muscles.
See how it rises
and falls into the grainy
space between us?
The story we saw
but never spoke.
I decided that I wanted to feel it,
but not for a long period of time.
Maybe 10 minutes, 9 years, 3 lifetimes
Maybe I’d salt the wound, just to be sure.
Maybe I’ll salt the ground, just to be sure (the steps, too - you can always slip
in the winter)
you can always slip
But I’ve got places to be and
my heart is a lump that’s got fleshbones to sew
(holes in the seams and seems to be serious)
I decided that I wanted to know it,
but just 4 words and nothing more. Leave me at the paragraph
too daunting to read
I’ll roll up the paper - the fire needs kindling
I decided that I wanted to want it,
but I didn’t know how
anymore
to unravel it.
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.
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.