Slam

The line curves around the block, alphabet city so close to home now you breathe the streets like their fire is yours to spit. Crowd into the small space that feels like you've known it forever and maybe you have. They stand on this tiny stage and set everything ablaze, they paint the night in colors you forgot you already knew, New York swerves and dances inside your chest like it owns you, and it owns you, you always knew but now you know, she says thank you that we went, no I mean thank you like it was a gift and I think this gift wasn't gingerly unwrapped it exploded in your hands like a grenade my whole body shivering and it can't be just that their AC was set too low.
Walk home into numbered avenues and everything tingles, my body feels different and I run my long nails hard against my skin just to know the outline, just to place this entity back on the ground, back on the streets, I cried five times already and I can't meet the man with the twinkling eyes because I fear I may consume him my borders aren't solid enough yet. I forget where I end and the city begins. On the street corner by my apartment a man lies unconscious in the street and his friends try to cover for him yelling insults at each other and there must be a reason they're not involving the cops. All week I worked, I worked till I forgot how to stand, I'm so hungry, but I know now the answer lies not in a filling diet but in magic, I need no food, no sleep, I am invincible, did you know this was the secret all along because I think I did but I forgot my prescription lenses to see the good word how it was written. Monsoon rains wash the avenue, wipe the slate clean, I will slit these wrists just to see how they bleed and when they throw bleach on the pavement come morning I'll be long gone anyway my blood is in the East River now
I ain't never coming down.