They say
It all will be okay-you're beautiful
As if those words can draw the line
Between bravery and slavery
And clear my back of scars
Left by the lash of sacrifice.
Every choice I have made
Has been a step away
From love, from freedom, from home.
For in this maze of concrete and steel
I must be alone, and always composed -
There is always someone watching
So I keep a steel rod in my spine
And walk towards the end of the city
Pretending I cannot feel passer-bys stare
Sizing me up
Feigning deafness to the murmurs of my pronounced bones and sharp features
All I am is a hanger for clothes
A display, a game, a gamble
They want it to pay off
So they tell me it will all be okay
Because I am beautiful

I am somewhere, maybe everywhere, but mostly nowhere.
Home is fictional; I am drifting in this city of strangers. Another night without rest, a candle burning, a boy crying, blood on the kitchen floor. I tried to buy cigarettes but my account decided it was empty. From the window on the fourth floor across the street, it might seem that I live a lavish life. I stay in Tribeca- I  even have an elevator. When I go out, I dress well. Beautiful people surround me and usually drinks are free. Sometimes they buy me breakfast or coffee or give me a place to stay. My weekends are often spent in East Hampton, in a three house lot that serves as a sanctuary. I go to nice places for dinner. I am not the one paying. I buy this with my silence, a silver tongue that keeps quiet when food and water are scarce. It's okay, it has to be, that's what I tell everyone who asks for help. How can I ease their wounds when mine are gaping, when I feel sick and weak and lost? I pay them with compassion-I give them kindness. I am exhausted.
I don't remember the last time I had money in my pocket or an answer I can stand behind.
This is what I wanted.
I kiss the man next door goodnight. I listen when he is sad. I carry the guilt of the woman I stay with in exchange for a corner to sleep in. My eyes are heavy with concealed bruises. My heart is heavy with the pain of others. My body is light with the heaviness of hunger.
This is what I wanted.
Will someone tell me what to do? Can I dream about a studio with a bookshelf full of my favorite authors and a man beside me each night? Am I weak if I walk away? Do I go back to school after a summer of travel and pretend that I am the same? Can I look love in the eyes and promise purity?
I am somewhere, maybe everywhere, mostly nowhere.
I am suffering quietly. I am proud.
I am absolutely terrified. I am alive.
This is what I wanted.

Tonight, I am afraid.
I am afraid because I had a piece of toast 13 hours ago, and there's nothing left in the fridge except some horrible strawberry liqueur, which I am drinking despite the fact that it feels like acid in my empty stomach. Me, I'm 5 feet 11 inches, 112 pounds, blue-eyed with longish blonde hair. I'm hungry, but it appears that New York doesn't feed outsiders. So I'm listening to Leonard Cohen on Leonard Street because that's the only thing I can think of that makes sense right now. Smoking in bed, my small luxury. I had a neighbor who leaves me toast and coffee in the morning, except I haven't seen him in a while and I'm too proud to knock on the door and ask for food. It's strange, leaving a perfectly ordinary life for this desperation, this skinny **** that I thought was important but now just makes it hard to climb the stairs. I'll make it, though, right? It's almost September and that's when I'm supposed to make money. Money. I just wanted to go to Italy again, feel the life I should never have left again. So okay I’ll be their clothes hanger, their one-man show, walk a pretty walk for them, and then go somewhere else. Except right now I'm considering the hospital, that sweet IV that will keep me nourished. I can't afford a taxi though, and I don't know what is I’d tell them- “Hi I'm 20 years old, broke, starving, alone, and afraid to sleep because I don't know if I'll see another day”- I think they would send me to the psych ward instead. I don't know, I am supposed to be a hybrid of girlish innocence and feminine mystique, but all I really want is someone to put me to bed and watch me sleep so I know I'll be safe.   It's 3:26 am. I have no one to call. It's just Leonard Cohen and I on Leonard Street, singing through dry lips and fading into the white of the sheets. If I called for help, I doubt they'd find me in the bed. I'm here, though, I'm here.

I left with very little, expecting a week or perhaps two in the city, quick cash and then home to the sand of my beaches and the touch of my bed. It has been exactly two weeks and I am starting to say that I live here. There's an exhilaration attached to the detachment of a one-way ticket, I am a thousand people a day while being none, I can walk away from conversations without feeling guilty, there is not one person who cares enough about me to bother with my affairs-it is absolute freedom. Yet there is a loneliness that hangs on the hinge of liberation...a traveler has the world in their heart.  We cannot stop ourselves from stuffing our experiences inside, gluttons of the road with the horizon in our eyes. Sometimes, though, we lose sight of what we wanted all along and then begin to search for what we desire, which becomes blurred and tangled by time zones and climates and languages...our stomachs are always empty and our chests are always aching for the unknown.  It can break a person. I was on the bus back from East Hampton when an older man asked me why I was crying:
"I don't know",  I said, "I suppose I just realized that this city takes everything from you, and you must prove yourself to earn it back".
He told me what they all do:if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere
I turned back towards the window before asking, "when you came here, did you have nothing, too?"
The man nodded and smiled. Maybe he was lying, but he gave me 50 dollars and paid my cab fare. I hugged him goodbye and he wished me luck. I don't know how he knew I was completely broke with no way to get back to my apartment, but I cannot imagine the forty-block walk with three bags. There is a kindness in a fellow traveler, one more seasoned than we are, who will always understand what it is to be poor and hungry and tired. But we chose this life, I chose this life, when I stepped on the plane with no way back. I realized this as I was locked atop a rooftop in SoHo, watching the pink and blue of sunrise with champagne on my lips. It is okay to admit your inadequacies, to ask for help, as long as you appreciate the sheer genius of the universe. That, after all, is why this life calls to us.

I was never the bad one.  Not until now.  Yet here I am with ice coated fire in my eyes, the gaze that I have seen so many times in the men who have hurt me, a monster of their creation.  It feels like the good in me has receded into the castle I was forced to build around my heart and is starving out the battalions of intent.  I need to cleanse myself of this abomination, a mental labyrinth meant to keep myself from success, my own worse enemy - me.  

There was a girl I liked once, when she was living in Italy.  Her hair was white-gold in the sun and her blue-yellow eyes were always open, though often exhaustion fought to close them.  Even when she cried she was beautiful, because she did not hide her sadness, or her anger, and the blue and yellow became cerulean pools to swim in. Her happiness made strangers smile, she stood upright despite her height of 5"11, and she woke up every morning with the knowledge that everything was exactly how it was supposed to be.  This girl, this donna, had that chemical spark in her stare, fed by the history of several centuries, and always, always, her intentions were true.  She spoke to strangers, slaughtering their language but they did not mind because she was trying, forever trying to bring joy into her heart.  That kind of determination becomes a cloak of silver lace that brings others closer to you, all seeking the refuge of contentment, until everyone is wearing the same spider web of felicè and little iridescent strings form a community of pulsing satisfaction.

I wish I was still her, and sometimes I am, but mostly I believe she is waiting on the rosy marble steps of the duomo while I battle my invisible monsters.  I do not think I will see her I again until I knock down that castle, surrendering my slender body and my past and those tremors in the night.  I hope she is still there, her cheeks matching the cathedral's glow underneath the pink clouds of dawn, to embrace me when I fall to my knees, begging her to share the cloak we wove together.

To you, I owe each sleepless night

Which I pay by every turn and toss

Until morning drags her violet light

To collect my dues, each hour’s loss

This is not something that I resent

I have found delirium to be a pleasure

As the only things dreams can present

Are fleeting moments, a frantic measure

I know we spent at least three days

As slaves to desire, instead of rest

With crimson eyes, a rosy craze

And even passion had confessed-

That she grew exhausted, and so she left

Yet still our bodies found each other

Knowing her absence was no theft

For the true criminal was another

A crueler kind-his name is Time

And it seemed as though a second spent

Brought upon the cathedral’s chime

If only to remind us of our rent

Late again, and again it’s due

But he had taken our every cent

I will never regret giving me for you

For sleepless nights is all it meant

I miss you
Like the secrets I whispered deeply
Into my pillowcase
Just before the house caught fire
Those evening tales, lost
With the photographs hidden beneath a loose floorboard
Paper and ink curling into nothing
But lightly falling ash
Kissing me softly as I watch from the street
Until the embers cease to glow
And morning light reveals me
-A silent statue of grey