Afters

Wake up early, too early, the street still sleeping and a sort of hang over drying on your lips. I dreamed something otherworldly; remembering it's just another work day seemed a cruel sort of blow to a soul that was busy flying. Send electronic apologies for my manic rambles, but the truth is I'm not sorry. I'm so done being sorry, so done thinking I'm sorry when I'm actually happy, so done thinking I'm failing that my savings account is low or my Instagram account is flawed when I'm actually busy squeezing the most juice out of this short life I possibly can; I doubt, so often I doubt, so often I think I created this ambition to have something to hold on to that wasn't square because someone once told me that square is lame but it's not true, that's not it at all, it's because once you've felt the way your love fills your gut and expands your chest and swims behind your eyelids it's all you ever want to feel and maybe that's a drug like any other but fuck it. If this drug kills me, at least it let me live.

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.

underneath

Race through the days, you become the person who eats lunch on the 7th avenue local train and packs your bag for a handful of adventures at a time. Evening is perfect and cool, and you laugh in his eyes without being sure why. You haven't the time to think about it.

At home the word processor lies waiting, begging for attention. It's late, too late, you're drunk and delusional and the alarm clock is already warming up its siren song but no matter, you promised today you would write, so you do.

The race only serves to distract you from your purpose, but no matter. When you sit in stillness, midnight long since past and not a wave of tired in your bones, the noise falls away and the purpose is clear.

Did you put ink to paper today?
OK.

Rain days

I sat for a short while,
in a TriBeCa window,
between two shifts and
unslept,
out of place with the Chambers Street suits
having their expensive lunches
around me,

and all I felt
was free.

Bleed

Then one day it comes to you. You spend all day circling it, slaving over hot stoves (the weather doesn't call for it, but you're trying to scare out the mouse that lives within), singing other songs and other stories, feeling it bubble within but not quite ready yet. I sat down late at the typewriter, and it whispered things I should already know but was glad to hear again, and when the cursor began blinking, a whole other world appeared.

So many days pass when you do not feel the magic in your veins, when the words you write are dusty and common and you begin to doubt you were ever meant to put any ink into the world, but one night in revelry erases every such thought from your nerves. Anything seems possible, you want to never sleep, or eat, or waste time on meaningless worldliness. All you ever want is to sit in silence, in this cramped corner in this messy room, and listen to a story that paints itself inside your eyelids. It's a story that no one knows and no one sees but you. It is your little secret.

Until you tell it.

Notes

New York is the world's largest orphanage. We come here in search of being told we are good just the way we are. We are looking for a forever home. 

Clinton Hill

I moved to Brooklyn. I packed a little backpack and got on a bus at MetroTech, I didn't know the streets but they felt old, like they knew me. Climbed the stairs and found the key hidden in the compost (not in the compost, under the compost). The dog is blind, but she hears you come in and retreats to a corner to sulk. You are not who she hoped you would be.

I can commiserate.

Empty the wine bottle slowly and your ego quickly. Uselessness looks the same on both sides of the East River. I have to tell the dog when to step up and down curbs. The hasidic kids laugh, but it's mostly summer and freedom bubbling to the surface.

Everything looks different.

It feels exactly the same.