I
sleep

and

drink

and

brave dark nights


I
cope

and

seek

and

wish for fights

I wish I could live that panicked fever dream of being an artist in the fifties or sixties,

where I am writing, in Greenwich Village, in a barely-furnished apartment at three in the morning,
the aching howls of human animals and screaming sirens attending to laws and emergencies floating through an open window.

A black cat creeps in from the fire escape and jumps up to the desk, lazily, where I am sitting
with a bottle of something cheap next to an overflowing ashtray, and I am

biting down a cigarette, while clicking-clacking on a typewriter.
"Ding!" shrilling puncturing the air whenever I come to the end of a thought,
and thats when I pluck the cigarette out of my mouth, ash it, go to the next line,
and then fervently begin again.

It's okay. I brush my hair. I can listen. I hear the cars that have replaced the crickets and frogs.

I light. I **** in smoke. Hold. Exhale.

I always plan how I'm going to kiss someone I'm seeing, and it never works out like I think it will.
I mull over plots and tricks and pick up lines. I smile, giggle, and have conversations with imaginary figures by myself--on a bus, in my kitchen, in the shower. I noticed one day my Dad does that too.

But planning for the kiss. Versus the actual situation of the kiss.
I haven't gotten to use the move that I want to, where I try and give someone a palm reading in a cute and enchanting manner and then I seem to fumble. I "forget" what to say, I bite my lip and look shyly at them, telling them it's hard to concentrate and "I seem to have forgotten what comes next because it is very overwhelming being in such close proximity to someone so. . . cute". Then I'd giggle and blush.

I swear it would work, but in the situation where I had planned to use it, well. . .

We were sitting on my old apartment's couch, making dumb jokes about this berry juice I was drinking because the ****** tension was practically palpable. He took the juice bottle from me.

"Beet juice." he remarked casually, examining the ingredient list.
"That must be why it's red," I said, "The natural dyes in beets."

Then I looked at him and he looked at me. Then Jesus-*******-Christ, that set off a chain of events.
But beet juice. Really? Really?

But.

What happens in my head versus real life.

It's both nice and exciting, but it's always disappointing when I have to throw out a box of memories another person and I never shared. Gritty and distorted, I had imagined us (so many us's) laughing with warm and tanned skin, freckled shoulders and a night where we both look at the stars sitting somewhere cold, and nervous. Accidentally bumping hands in a manner reminiscent of most starts of young, summer love.

I can't remember the last time I looked at the stars with someone.

I can only remember one clear night in July.

But, I can't remember the last time I got a warm, unexpected kiss from someone who made my belly flip once-over, twice and my cheeks blush. Who made me look sideways, shyly.

I know it might come again, one day. But I have to be patient, and that is not easy. I don't want to finish, because this is unfinished with a pointed effort of not concluding with poignancy.
I don't want a flourish at the end because I haven't ended this thought yet.

scraping my belly until it is raw
along the ground in a slow crawl

(road rash)

gravel, close, I smell the rain on the asphalt, crawling,
the grey and brown--pull--skin (away and away) now
it's embedded in my skin, while membranes grow off

brown splinters

sliding under layers and layers of thin skin
visible, when they puncture and break out

repiercing

Where is my redemption for my (in)action?
Why must I be such a sadist to all?

Our quiet dispositions made for a double-edged sword, as we sat on blood-stained sheets, littered with stems and shredded tobacco bits.

Listening to "Blowing It" by Dinosaur Jr. I realized I, too, didn't know a thing to say to you. We seemed similar, in a way to a certain extent.

He had a stick and poke on his thigh that said "NO"
and we ******. Casually.

======================================================­==================
"I think you're cute and I like that you're tall."
"I think you're cute too and it's nice that you like that."
==========================================================­==============

We smoked spliffs and talked about how it was nice to be dating multiple people.

And what it's like to have a sugar mama,
And that crack is an underrated drug,
And that I should meet more people who like The Velvet Underground,
And how we both like beer, IPAs,
And how I smelled nice,
And how I shouldn't have chosen "Women" of Bukowski's to read first,
And that he should read "Slaughterhouse-Five", and I was willing to give him my copy

(The blood on my sheets wasn't mine, he had skinned knees.)

It was odd, but also nice, to meet someone with a similar disposition to me,
but there was nothing incendiary to hang on to, more just a slow warmth.

I finger the edge on a dull knife and don't cry over white hearts of onions
as I cut them silently, and more easily than I can cut through the white fog
that has maintained permanence in my head, daily-daily (maybe-always).

in the slow tempered, pull of a dry heave and tugging
slackened lines of sail being held up by beams of brown,
a ream of paper is spread, out, like a sheet over the cities
and the needle pulls through with thread, between beats

scratching my scalp
itching my shoulder

all for the meat underneath,
covered in barbecue sauce
come to me, so sticky, sweet

my words are hollow (a promise cannot be kept). my ears are muffled (this beer is warm).
my head is dead (I abstain from meat). don't come for me strangers (quickly, pulled pork).

I close my eyes,
while walking,
remembering

"To Autumn" by Keats

and how it feels to crush an acorn under my heels
and how it feels to pluck a red leaf off an oak tree

and how it felt to be young
and how it felt to be young

and how that every memory is shrouded in fog
and how every recalling warps their accuracy
and how it felt to be an unwanted outsider

and how after I was wanted, after some some summer, heat faded, I came

it was marked, everything changed, because I chose to be different and difficult,
and that was better, like the dry leaves, it is delicate, crunching easily underfoot
spidery veins all brown and beautiful, thin and papery, but it is interesting, and

red, and orange, and purple, and leaves sweep up in the pull of the breeze and

I have never truly believed in God, but I have always believed in the wind

I felt it on the nape of my neck in my youth it held me
by the scruff, but with age it was covered and my own
and my hair grows long, brown, tumultuous, tangled,

it is my trace, billowing, behind me as I walk, steadily
facing the against wind, neither breathing nor praying

because the wind in my face, swaying
filling me with smells of earthy decay
as the machine of leaves crumble, that

is more beautiful than all
and the ending of this is
all my beginning