Garden Apt

Heat roils Second Avenue even early in the morning, I drag a motley collection of survival gear up the numbered street. Fumble with keys to a quiet apartment, with that strange air of abandonment that houses get when the people who should be there leave. I'm here instead, I whisper at the cool floor and clean lines, feeling insignificant. But I open a back door, walk bare feet across rare East Village garden tiles, sit under a large tree and drink iced tea, pearls of sweat forming on my upper lip. I sigh in that way women do when they get old and believe they live in the South. I spend so much of my time lately watching the dregs that make up my life swirl the drain, and I can't figure out if I should try to catch them or not.

An alarm interrupts my meditations. Tell me it's time to zip these frayed edges back up, paint on a smile, step back out through the doors into unwavering streets, and carry on like moving forward didn't require your full attention.