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I contemplate whether I am doing enough. How much is sufficient to comprise a life well-lived? A meal, cooked. A house, warmed. An invitation, open. Getting myself up and putting myself down. Today, nothing happened / It’s a good day when nothing happens.1 Board by board. Bored, unwilling to do more. Leading a life more witnessless, but more surveilled. I try not to look drunk, keys jangling in front of the threshold camera. What is the most nonchalant way to unlock a door? (Pose) What is the quietest way up the stairs? (Repose)
What we have lost in the anticipation— / a descent follows, / endless and indestructible.2 There are desires I can’t confess. Not yet, maybe never. I know my audience. I used to fantasize before bed; now I dream at sunrise. I want I want I want. I am I am I am. We are We are We are. A heartbeat I may never know. You left an impression on me. Not you, you. In the back. It’s not open to discussion anymore / She’s out again tonight / And, I’m alone once more.3
A thump in the night. The trash truck in the morning. A sound that draws me outside, bleary-eyed. Was that a kitten meowing? Perhaps not a hallucination. That was, after all, before they cut down all the tall grass in the empty lot. Not ready to open a can a day; unmaternal at heart. Hashtag dog mom. Hashtag Pilates body. I say I’ll spray my skin orange, work on my void eyes. They always betray just what I’m thinking. I never had the charisma. The noive.
Glimmers of feeling. Remembered adulthood. Visions of a future. It never feels like that in the Now. I never liked red wine as much as the idea of red wine. And no whiteness (lost) is so white as the memory / of whiteness.4 Whereas we don’t remember the itch, sting, scratch, and burn of remembered pain. That, for me, is the difference between the past and the present. I’ll tell you what I miss…5
At the age of twenty-seven, I look in the mirror and wonder if I have what it takes to be America’s Next Top Model (2004). I want to be on top. I wonder if I have what it takes to catch them all (Pokémon Emerald, 2005). California, here we come, right back where we started from (The OC, 2003). So this is it, a watery goodbye / Two suicides in perfect motion.6
Can you spare a quarter for a blind dog? Wearing my indoor clothes out and my outdoor clothes in. You look comfortable, I’m jealous, said a traveling salesman. Later on, down the block, he told me he meant to say he liked my blue eyelashes. A while back, someone on the street said, halfheartedly, Give me your bag. It didn’t feel too serious at the time. More of a nod to the idea of robbery than an actual one.
Bike sore. Not yet bike bitten, so learning not to be bike shy. Punching the clock in the department of beggars, not choosers.
I flew east, not as far as I thought. I still have all the time in the world until I die. I remembered my anniversary with her (No Campari (lost) is so sweet as the memory / of Campari). He and I decided to forget our old anniversary. We begrudgingly admit we’re too old for Carmelo’s. At least we can acknowledge these things. The moment before sex, when everyone is taking their socks off. We laugh so hard at this universality, nearly spitting out our not-negronis. Well, here’s to townie loners / We’ll drink until we’re wet / Keep looking over shoulders / For someone you haven’t met.7
At the age of twenty-seven, I tell everyone who will listen that I finally caught glimpse of the man in the moon. A bespectacled glance east on an avenue intersection. He was rising, orange, round, and huge. It feels lucky to see such things when living a horizonless life. Occasionally, the city is flat enough for me.
It’s the end of an era! I say with verve, looking down at my phone, as I fall into an open manhole.
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“Noise Machine,” 22° Halo
“The Descent,” William Carlos Williams
“Baby Plays Around,” Elvis Costello
“The Descent,” William Carlos Williams,
“limbo,” Aylo Rosé
“I’m Bricked Up and Crying,” Ben Special
“Weed,” Porches
an enigmatic piece, that, from a distance fragments of who I was can relate to..