The Years

New York swelters, your high heels click, clack all the way to Chinatown and you couldn't catch a cab here to save your life in the 80s so you try to remind her that the city hasn't stuck around in the dream they once lived. We got all the cabs our heart could desire, but we can no longer afford to live where they go. I turn my days and nights around in whirls of alcohol, into fits of giggles with people who actually love me until I forget to stare into space and see the inevitable void that lies there. Flashes of your insignificance slap you upside the head at random moments, in a stairwell, in the middle of a conversation, when the hangover drags across your temples and you're too weak to counter their seemingly reasonable arguments. She speaks of grit and you wonder now if you have any idea what that is, all you've done is spend a life surviving.

I sleep straight across the bed, now, and wake with my feet hanging off the edge while my shoulder aches. I don't know what sort of anodyne I expected it to be. I'm just trying spend my days
surviving.