of the Interior

Days of sweat, heaving breaths and glistening brows, the thunder finally gives way to a light breeze, a peach-colored sunset that takes your breath away and renders the East Village a continuous buzz of movement. You turn the familiar corner at Bleecker street, sit on the Morton Street stoop drinking cocktails as dusk gives way to mosquito bites and sirens. It's easy, it's home, and you realize it always will be. There should be words for that, but you walk closely alongside her in silence. Perhaps that's the best way it could be said.

I took the G into old haunts tonight, stepped off at Greenpoint Avenue and it was reassuringly the same. We walked up Franklin Street, like so many years ago. The barge bar wasn't ready for patrons yet; we stood near the water's edge and watched heavy skies hang across the ceiling of Manhattan, across the projects and the thin sliver where you run. Found again the bar where you spent sweaty nights playing table tennis and escaping the room with no A/C in the linen factory up the street. Do you remember how the ice cream truck would scream insults into your ears? You spent your days on the rooftop, staring at the city across the water. How close it lay, like you could reach out and touch it with your trembling fingertips. You traced its outline with your words, dreamed at night of its quiet halo, longed to journey across the waters and land in its mad embrace. You did, at last, and you never looked back.

Dreams are always so pretty from afar.

How terrifying when they're even better
up close.