Heat Wave

Are you remembering to breathe? she says.
For the most part. Sometimes not.
I understand, she says.

The days go on, although sometimes it seems impossible. That each day should pass, that suddenly it's been a month or a year and the things that left you bleeding in the street be only memories and you're not even sure you were there for whatever came before. You don't want to spend your life just trying to stay alive, and yet how many days and months and years have you exhausted yourself just trying to breathe? Twelve years ago I arrived in New York City, Tonight Show marquee glittering in my eyes and the Queensboro Bridge like a hallucination; leaving it was the hardest thing I thought I would ever have to do, and yet a few years later did I not do it again? Somehow I am convinced by the inevitability of my own survival. The days go on, you endure.

Summer ages, begins to be forgotten even as the temperatures soar with the steam. Fall arrives, it's time to get serious, it's time to find those ducks and place them in some sort of row, no one cares if you breathe or not as long as you smile in pictures. I make lists, I try to look at myself in the mirror and see the person who came before the blood bath, but it is impossible. She is no longer here. I decorate my bullet points, pull out maps and trace my pulse along their stories. The days were not supposed to look like this, but they do. You've survived this far.

Soon it will be time for you to live.