The city sounds like the muted trumpet beats of a the nineteen year old protege.
Who is sitting in the shadow of the black cube sculpture on Astor Place.

There's a sixteen year old waiting for the subway,
She is singing alone, to You Make Me Feel So Young, while her absent-minded mother snaps along.

Tonight she will relive the boys she has known, who have held her waist and kissed her mouth and
She won't feel anything because
she is unconsciously dancing to the trumpet music and jazz playing around her in Washington Square.

I'm not looking for your face
in the lights that flash by
the subway car window.
All blue, red and white blurs
across my irises.
The train ran parallel to another
and in the adjacent car
there was a boy,
my age,
rapping and spilling
parts of his soul
to an empty subway car.
His headphones loud and blaring,
he didn't see me.
I don't think he was looking.

We have a brownstone townhouse kind of love
The kind that we can cover with the murals of our madness
With the paint of our perfection
That's built on the floorboards of our expectations

The number always changes but the people never seem to

I would like our love
To not be measures in square feet,
But with the creeping doors and narrow staircases.
The closets stopped hiding the things we asked them to
And my skeletons lay sprawled
All hip bones
Vertebrae
and rib cages
What has become of me?
I asked myself
and your look said unfamiliarity
and an animosity
Which I never thought possible.
Your smile spelt out greed
And your vocal chords never articulates the syllables I wanted them to.

You used me.
An I fell for it.
Is love just muscle memory?
Are we all just reacting the same way we did the first time?

is like an airport terminal;
where everyone is waiting and no one is going anywhere.
Where the only thing people can tell you is
that your problems will be solved in
ten minutes.
(The amount of time that is short enough to
keep you waiting
and long enough to
make you insane)
The number that actually means: I have no ******* clue.
Airports are made to be passed through
while the people are still bubbling with anticipation.
But if you stay long enough
you beginning seeing through your peripheral vision.
And we all end up being
the last bag on the baggage claim
going
round
and
round
on the conveyer belt.
Searching for our owners.

At some point we are each
the pushy New Yorker
the silent blue-eyed six year old, wandering alone.
the child singing a song without caring who is listening.
We are all trapped in the unaccompanied minors waiting room
without a guide
in the trust of people, before today we had never laid eyes on
and to them we are simply bodies
needing to be moved, shipped, transported
on some conveyor belt to our next destination
we might as well be the luggage we pack our lives into.

The preschool was adjacent to the church
and I would whisper as we grew closer to the sanctuary.
I would hold my mom’s hand, tightly
and peak between the heavy double doors.
When she would let go, I would run down the aisle, the light shining through the tall blue stained glass windows.
I would count the pews in my peripheral vision.
I remember being too scared to go up all the steps of the alter.
I remember a three year old version of myself
staring wide-eyed into the blue light.

I'm done writing poems about you.
I don't want to rewrite them.
I just want to put them in a cardboard box
put your name on the side in thick sharpie
and push it to the back of my closet
and move on
and forget.
Eventually, be happy with what happened with us.
But not right now.
Not at this moment
because it tastes bitter.
and I'm remembering things that make me feel empty.

Helen.

Tell me about Turkey. Mustafakemalpasa. Bursa. Canakkale. Bandirma. 1973. Tell me about your insane exchange family: Ilhan, Sennur, Ahmet, and Canur. Falling for the family friend, Necdet—who died six short years later. Swimming in the Sea of Marmara. That infamous yellow bikini. 110 in the shade. Smelling the drying tobacco. Learning how to read the Koran.  Tell me please, Helen.