Penser

I think at first the silence will scare me

into wallowing in the has-beens

and yearning for wine on the rooftop

that flirts with the water

and poses a fantasy in a would-be train car

with battered curtains

where once Mayhem had brunch next to me

and a tiny turtle peed in a cardboard box,

(seemed rather hilarious

after 4 bloody marys).

I think at first the silence will scare me

into yearning for the 1 AM

ambulance sirens blipping

(they rock me to sleep)

to create a space up first avenue --

perhaps I will be taken aback

by the smell of grass

and the knowledge of warmth

that isn’t tainted by swirls of snow

and is kept at bay with a sweater

(how ridiculous to yearn for a siren).

And I think I will have to remember

that small talk doesn’t have to have an agenda

(it can be meant in total kindness)

and I think I might not miss, but will always worry

about the women wailing in the subway,

the one I try to help by keeping Kind bars in my purse

and the one arrested on the platform

barred from help by the man in a blue uniform

bearing the initials NYPD.

I think I will miss the 22-year-old

who moved to the West Village

in pursuit of a particular kind of life

that she had been told looked nice,

but so sadly discovered didn’t fit,

and I will miss this girl

who desperately loved

and still clings occasionally,

this woman who came of age

in the city that never sleeps,

rocked by sirens

and drunken screams.

I am searching for footholds

in a circle of niceties,

jagged lines of a cat scratch

connecting the dots,

I stand at 1 AM

in the living room that never

quite felt mine,

staring out paned glass doors

up first avenue

and I become a moving taxi

and if I look a certain way

I can move forever 

up that singular avenue

that becomes and stays

a ribbon of abyss…

or I can sleep

and dream of a town

that smells like grass

and enfolds me in the silence

filled with the noise of my future.

and i miss him

walk slowly backward

so as not to alert the ghosts

to your presence,

because they didn’t expect to see you

again, so soon really,

they thought you were long gone,

embraced by the future

inevitably created by

the unwitting passing of time

23,36,45,49,60

he stands safely ensconced

with the version of me

that liked eating bagels 

on a Saturday morning,

doing dishes and listening to "Stairway to Heaven" again --

they don’t notice me and don’t know

that I know that this isn’t their future

1,2,5,16,18

and I desperately miss the man who came into the kitchen

and usually didn’t have a bowl of chicken noodle soup

because he was eating with or had eaten with Ed

and laughed with delight at the slightest provocation

because he knew we loved him so very much

and we thought the forever-future contained his smile

and that he would of course be there to watch us get married

and he would know our others and

and he would know our children

and it never occurred to us that he wouldn’t be there

and I watch him sit at the old white island counter

with a sixteen-year-old who can’t see beyond

the importance of being cast in a high school play

and he massages her shoulders and fills her with love

and I wish I could tell her

that she should sit there 10 minutes longer

because the future is a fickle thing

27,18,15,5,2,6

and I will never forget

the little girl

who paced and paced and paced,

wearing a groove into the floor

in front of the wall that was a mirror,

two of her grieving and muttering

because he wasn’t coming back --

she sits in the back of a car

in her favorite dress

and sings "Eagle’s Wings"

and I watch her and am glad to know

that she knows, at age 6,

what it is to love and be loved

26,23,16,6

and it’s so very, very easy to sit in the past,

to pretend to be still and walk backward

slowly so as not to alert the ghosts

to your present.

9PM/midnight hotel room

i nestled into the niche,

tried to fit,

said things like ‘queer futurity’

and hoped the body in and out of time

made sense in some capacity 

again again again

my once and future project

saying the words but

fishing, wanting, waiting, repeating,

wishing the niche was a little more grooved

it felt like the land that is and isn’t,

the warmth and wet and quiet 

of a 9PM/midnight hotel room, 

alone thinking drowning and breathing

and thinking and breathing stilly,

until change sunk in languidly and 

suddenly and

it’s one thing to look at a future,

another thing entirely to grasp it’s reality,

like gazing into a mirror and accepting

that perhaps there will always be a scar on your neck

and you should be grateful it is there 

because it is 

the study of bodies

women and pregnancy, 

the queer futures that would not be

because i couldn’t breathe.

i yearn for the emptiness. 

i am the desire to be and do 

to think and feel and study 

and mother and want and love 

and know and learn and know and learn 

and feel and study and.

how does every day become

a day-to-day and also the fantastic –

a fairytale, an almost, a could-be.

he never said a word,

honestly i think he didn’t notice.

he loved me for me.

softly

she discovered a chrysalis

and knew that if she ever so gently

blew a breath soft as a baby's cheek

it would unfold to produce a new life,

a breathless moment of “hello,”

but then she remembered that Alice's 

butterfly came from a smoking caterpillar

who spoke in riddles,

and she was suddenly possessed of a deep fear

of bridging the gap between the here and the then.