Diverted

Return to the city and find it has turned into a steaming bath. People move slowly, the air not at all, and you gasp for breath as beads of sweat make their way down the small of your back. He sends pictures of rain; you know the way the air feels there in July rain, but it's too far to even long for. I walked through a quiet dark street in Queens and found it lit intermittently by lightning bugs, a steady, pulsating yellow lights alongside my browning knees. It's a gentle reminder of the sweetness of nature, how it will outlast us all. A comforting thought. 

My body continues to turn itself inside out in pains, I take pills, shake it off, try not to listen. Someone broke into our apartment last week and didn't steal a thing; I don't know if I should be grateful. This heat twists everything and it's hard to see clearly. Perhaps I wish you were here, but it might be a trick of the lights. I walked past the remains of a bunk bed on avenue C last night; the same bright red beams as of our little pocket on Curry Hill all those years ago. I slept like a dream in that bed -- all of New York was unknown and unclaimed, I loved it more than I could fear it, and it carried me across a thousand unknowns, did it not? Here it lay like the collapsed skeleton of a long extinct creature, like a relic. 

Perhaps that might be what I am, too, falling apart at the seams and too tired to be afraid of anything.

It doesn't feel any different than being alive.