dinner

The apartment was empty. The big rooms, and their pale walls, deserted. A window was open, and the rainy day outside splattered in.

We couldn’t hold hands anymore. She had grown old, and no longer sought the comfort held within my palms.

It was a Sunday, and I was more concerned with dinner, than the sadness saturating her eyelids. It’s been fun, she said, buttoning the last few buttons of her coat.

I said nothing, watching her walk out the door.

After she left, I stayed in our empty apartment for weeks, cooking up frozen meals, eating them alone on the bare ground. I didn’t read, or watch TV or answer the telephone. I had lost all ability to recognize emotion, and wasn’t sure if this meant I was depressed or a bad person. She would say the later, I would keep silent.

Eventually, I had to return to work, to put furniture back into the home I’d ruined. I was the editor of a small literary magazine that published up-in-coming, non-traditional prose. Small bites of fiction, mostly, but occasionally a parade of haikus, strung together like Christmas lights on a decorated tree.

I hated my job, probably because I wasn’t very good at it. I’d never been a writer, or anything, simply a failed reader, who couldn’t find anything else to enjoy, other than submersing myself in the tokens of strangers’ lives. You should’ve been a psychoanalyst, my mother used to say.

We had tried for a long time to have children. I knew both of us were in denial about our abilities as parents, but there was no use in fighting, then. Maybe we thought children would fix our relationship, give us something to work for, something to work towards. When she couldn’t get pregnant, and I stopped caring, the love we had once felt so intensely, flickered out.

I had gained some weight, and she had lost some. I once read somewhere that it is impossible for human beings to feel sad while eating. I took this to heart, while it took to my belly. Maybe that’s why she stopped loving me. Not the babies, or the boredom, but the belly, where I had tried to fill, or ignore, all the pain.

She never liked children. She told me, when we had just started dating, that all children were sticky. Truth be told, I was never too fond of them either, but certainly not on account of their texture.

When I am the most upset, I lay on the ground, in the dark and listen to records. I have to be alone otherwise this doesn’t work. If intruded upon, I become more upset, I become angry.

I think I am always angry.

I don’t remember what it feels like to by in love. I just remember the anger, and the sorrow, and the hate.

She never came back. I always imagined she would, but she doesn’t.

I slowly fill my apartment up with furniture. A coffee table, a bookcase; glasses and plates and silverware. I make big dinners, only for myself, and promise leftovers, but always end up eating the entire spread anyway.

Does this chicken breast love me? I ask. Do the mashed potatoes, corn and bread love me more? Am I the only one contributing to this relationship?

It is impossible for human beings to feel sad while eating.

So I chew, and chew, waiting as long as I can to swallow.

sunday

there are leaves on the ground, here.
and we can walk to
this place or
that
with the clicking of boot heels.


in bed,
flesh sprawls
hitting each window.
sandalwood and cigarettes, smoke the
birds and the
trees and the
ceiling.

elevators take us deeper in (where)
asthmatic children play warehouse (with)
scrap-metal and broken mouths.

the streets are never quiet,
are the walls, anymore?


and sprawling
sprawling bodies
in Brooklyn, we call home.

every bird breaks
forward, with the broom closet full.

I want to touch you,
feel your feathering lungs beat.

as city lights flicker
one by one by two to three
wings blink open and close,
thirsting for gravity.

my eyes stay shut and
your bird is born backward.

kissing (new york) is like lungfulls of gravity
pushing and pulling through lifeless beings and making them real,
again.

touching its insides, swallowed and succumbed to its reality
as if the most calm place: in the sea:
or in your belly:
or in this room:
can beat.

Your first love, and your last
are the same.

Don’t you know?

discovery

the tecontic plates of picture puzzles
fall and rise, with each taken breath
as the fish swim deeper into the body


of what we have not yet found.

red jellyfish

I have been a smoker for approximately six months. I've been smoking for longer, yes, but only recently fell into a groove, a brand and a habit. Late night car rides, generally alone; waiting for the bus or the train or a person to meet—when my nerves get the best of me. Camel Turkish Royals. Always.
For this particular cigarette, I had been waiting in line for something unimportant. I finished the smoke, clutched my leopard print jacket and walked around the corner to a vintage store, because my friends were meeting me there. I left the line and was not sad. But my friends did not come and so, I returned, limply.
My lungs were still full of nicotine and as my mouth began to rehydrate itself, a man approached me and asked if I had a smoke. Finally, I thought, others can recognize me as a smoker, which can only mean I truly am. Gladly, I reached into my pocket and retrieved the blue pack. "Do you need a light?" I asked. "Yeah. actually," he said. "I'm a terrible smoker."
For one reason or another, I was not compelled to join him. Instead, we talked and I became infatuated. As his cigarette drew to half-finished, I saw my friends round the corner. They came over and we all talked to one another. The man was named Jacques and he lived in L.A. We were college freshmen from New York, with sick parents and empty wallets. I was the love interest. She was the gay one. The third as the odd-one-out. And then, we became a story. After the fall into designated places, we grabbed our new identities and watched Jacques play the guitar in a room filled with trendy, Minneapolis lesbians. When the music stopped, and the lesbians filtered out, my two friends and I went to say hello to Jacques. "Let's go out front and have a cigarette." he said, and all three of us followed him, like lost children.
Outside, we were yet again, surrounded by short haired, thick glasses-strew women, and their younger, sexier girlfriends. We make small talk with Jacques, and another man—the drummer—named Josh. I am nervous and anxious and unwavering in my fictional persona. Josh leaves and so does the third-wheel friend. I stay to smoke another cigarette and Jacques stays with me. We both want each other and it is obvious; only I am not drunk and he must be. We tell the gay friend to go inside and she does. "I really want to put my hands on you." he says. There is nothing I want more and I tell him so.
Strangers come up to greet him and he does not let go of my back. I put my hood on, and he puts on his and we move closer and closer to kissing. "How much weed have you smoked today?" he asks and I say none, because that is the truth, but I am not offended by his questioning.
We kiss and it feels like the time I went swimming at Coney Island and the red jellyfish circled my twisting body. I was not scared, and strangely unsurprised. I knew the jellyfish could sting me, but it didn't matter. They were there and so was I and there was nothing the other could do about it.
After the kiss, I left, knowing I would never see Jacques again. I felt something I had not felt in a very long time. I could sense the energy beaming out from inside me and all my organs opened and lifted. I was fixed. My emotions were no longer urged to constrict and tighten. I was not afraid to feel them or of what could happen if I did.
I was healed, finally. Soon after, I began speaking to my oldest love, and though I had no idea whether my heart would be broken once more, I did not care, because I was ready to try again.

thanksgiving

She wanted to be a model in airplane bathrooms. The light that suited best.
Surrounded in furs and sky beneath, she learned her lesson. This is it, this is not, she said. She said. She learned. Just as children.

The Italian man slept in the aisle, and left no room for tight skirts and lengths of legs.

When cities were drifting, she drank-in fear. In its depths, she wanted to escape. This was the essence of her life, of her being and she knew it would cause great trouble later.

Mistakes are mistakes and some people think they are ok and others do not. You must learn to lie. To lie is to keep people happy. That is important.

That line is made of dust! She says. No, no, it is made of cloud.

She crosses the street, looking both ways, and gets into a taxi dripping with guilt. Let’s be quiet and look at the lights.