The time I saw New York
I cried
I cried for all the things I could remember
in a thin burgundy slip on some empty set of stairs

It was two minutes before midnight
“A New Year”
Something I wanted so much to be true
but I hid my face and wept

When I saw
that all the young girls and old men
in fancy clothes down below
didn’t disappear
or move or change

Instead, danced in circles
mirroring the portraits of my shame

Spinning
around and around,
Stuck in their own involuntary pulls
of gravity

I waited
for what felt like a day
in a glass room with skin-colored curtains
things going in, things coming out

He came in, panting hard
and kneeled beside the cold table where I sat
Face reddening in the cheeks
on the nose,
just like mine

When I told him,
two tears fell out of each his eyes
and I thought
I was made
of stone

He carried me through the wet April snow,
put us in a cab
and took me home

There was a bath running
and steam on the mirror

I got undressed for the third time that day
and sank
into the hot
white bubbles

He held my right knee
with his left hand
and told me
we weren’t going to school tomorrow

Someone once close to me
will whisper something significant

And my eyes will wander

Over hills
and small lakes
Through the houses of the young

But no sights of the known
will be seen

Because I will have forgotten

I come here to ******* and cry
where it is silent and loud at the same time

the porcelain statues watch and release temporal tears
in a painful response
to my nonsensical quivering of the mouth
and squinting of the eyes

there it is again
that baked salt
on the roof of my mouth, the ends of my fingernails

It almost came last night,
but I stopped it with a breath before it got close
to ruining me again

Those happy parts of my life are distant memories
they're so far away
I can't try to meet the girl I was
not even halfway

I used to ask myself which era of my life was the happiest
or most fulfilling
now I only ask myself why this one is so lost

Where have I gone?
I wish I could ask, but I'm the only one who knows how

To help her
find her way back
or hopefully forward