and Mirrors

I came home last night, and my shirt smelled of nostalgia. We sat in that dark lounge smoking countless cigarettes in that way which is no longer legal in any other place. Out in the open and free from the rules and restraints of the last few years. How different things seem; you can't go back again.

Tonight the sun set over a boat in the Hudson and we drank our Coronas with a wedge of lime and a slice of summer in the making, my shoulders sprouting freckles as the skyline lit up. How it returns, how it always returns and here we are. A year older, a year more rooted, more entrenched, more helplessly in love and what happens now? I wish we lived here, she whispered as we walked down Bleecker, but we reminded her that she already had. When I turned back onto Morton, the air was still so warm, so soft, unmoving. I frantically make plans for tomorrow. So many faces to imprint, one last time, in my mind. In my mind, this will be you, forever.

This apathy, this surreal, heartless, cold that surrounds me, it will break my fall. Without these scars around my heart, I'd never make it out of here alive.