Annick (my 28 year old sister) came down to NYC, from Boston, for a day visit. It was one of those warm, cerulean days between Christmas and New Years. Annick’s in a surgical residence, in a pandemic, but still somehow, she got away.

We’re dining on a shaded, outdoor, sundeck - I arrived first, by a moment but then the elevator opened and Annick emerged, looking like a model - familiar but I don’t know - more completely adult - more than ever like my mom. It was all I could do not to weep for happiness when we hugged.

After that long hug, Annick gave my clothes a slow, censorious looking-over. When my mom and I shopped for “school clothes” last year, in Paris, I bought some stunning designer (Anna Molinari) clothes - only to find out they were completely out of place at Yale. Now they’re sentenced to a trunk under my bed and my replacement clothes are from FatFace and Patagonia. Ordinary clothes, bought for their ordinariness.

I’ve been dressing to disappear but I wanted her to see a “new me.” How I’ve survived in a rough, academic country - not just survived - but thrived. I also wanted her to think her sister was beautiful and hoped I didn’t seem too strange. She cupped my chin - just like my mom does - “You look wonderful,” she said.

Annick mentioned we’d have company for lunch but she was alone - then this tall, fair-haired, man was with us. He slipped his arm around Annick’s waist and they smiled, together. I’d never met one of Annick's boyfriends before so this was a little disconcerting - part of me wanted to pull her away and say, “MINE!”

Annick made the introductions, “Anais, this is Gerard - Gerard, Anais.”  Gerard leaned into la bise then half hugged me, patting me bearishly on the back. I decided he was too tall and too handsome and began to examine him for flaws.

He wore a dark-charcoal-gray cashmere suit with a light-gray oxford-cloth shirt. “Are you always so dapper?” I asked? “I wanted to look substantial,” he said, with a very slight French accent. He held me at arm’s length. “You’re definitely sisters,” he said, smiling.

We settled in. At first we were a little stilted with each other, uncertain how to best introduce ourselves. Annick said that Gerard is a “Child Neurologist.” “Funny,” I said, “you look older.” and he laughed. I was warming to him.

“How’s school going?” Annick asked later, moving some of my fly-away hair out of my face - a trace of the maternal in her solicitous fussing - but I liked it.
“Easy peasy,” I said, the lie warming me like an ember or black magic.

There’s no real sibling rivalry between us. Imagine you’re Beyoncé’s sister, what are the odds that you’ll eclipse Beyoncé? Yeah, it’s ZERO.

“Ha!” she laughs, “you are such a little fibber.”
“I am NOT,” I hotly say, but my defense is ruined by my laugh. “I’m doing ok - but it’s a lot,” I say, to erase the fib.

They’re ENGAGED!
I tried not to act stunned but I doubt I was very convincing. The news thumped me like a gust of wind. Suddenly, I knew. Our yesterdays were no more substantial than a story we’d read together growing up, that you can mourn and rejoice at the same time.

Otherwise it was a family lunch, although at first I was a bit nervous around Gerard. At one point Annick says, “What are you doing?” as the table gently quivered.
I smiled wincingly, “Making circles with my ankles,” I said.
Annick smiled knowingly.

In times of clarity, or perhaps
Moments of weakness
(Depending on one's perspective)
My greatest fear, I think,
Is that of dying without achieving
Anything worthy of mention.

The idea of being so ordinary
That your death
(or rather, your life)
Will be rapidly evaporated
from the earth's memory
Like light rain on a molten tarmac afternoon.

But you, at least on a mentally strong day,
Delude yourself with bursts of creativity:
Poetry, film, ideas of grandeur,
All of which persuade you that either
You will not die for a long time,
Or you will someday soon achieve.

This thought is comforting
And all is well.

Until one day you are having
A particularly busy teaching day,
And you rush to the usual spot
To grab a regular taste of Dublin life,
And order your chicken fillet roll:
Lifeblood of an Irish working-man's lunch,
And you eat while you walk -
Both briskly to save time before
Rejoining the rich children.

And the slobbering mouthful of
Delightful chicken baguette
Casts taco sauce from its grasp,
And dribbles down your pubey beard.

You stop and take a finger to it,
Knowing full well that the damage is
Done and that those hairs will grip
To the smell of taco sauce until
The drain tastes their defeat after
A particularly overzealous shower.

And it is in that moment,
With finger and beard stained with
The orange-tinged blood of a chicken fillet roll,
That your ordinariness and worthlessness become apparent
And it destroys you...
Because you always thought taco sauce was spicy.

We’ve accepted that we’re already dead.

Like the soldier
Like the victim
No, the veteran of love
(and subsequent heartbreak)
We’ve accepted we’re already dead
So we can keep on living.

I was broken.
No longer working
No longer dreaming
No longer wanting
Pushing away
The hands that tried to help me
The encounters that didn’t last broke me.
I was embattled.
In the trenches of my own existence.

Those we met
Under picture-perfect circumstances
When we thought utopia could be real
woefully disproved this theory.
Rude awakening to what agony feels like

And sleeping all day so we could self-medicate
all night.
Self-medicating with ***** and cigarettes
Not because we needed to but
For respite
For the moment
For a friend in the bottle
Or the lighter.

Life is war
Survival is the only option
Death, inevitable and imminent

We are the ones in the ring
We have lived here
We will die here.

There are those who are weak
Succumbing to the needles
The tap tap tap on veins
Or worse
Ordinariness
Boring as the 8x11’s
found in printers
All around the world.

I will not be ordinary.
Surrender is not an option.
Because I am a gladiator
I have adapted.
I’m still in the ring
But I will defend myself now.
They are the lions;
The king of their race
But I
I am a gladiator in a Gap V-Neck Tee shirt.
I will die with love in my heart,
Belief in my soul
My ashes will spell out the word Hope.

Nothing will break me ever again.

As the beautiful leaves
upon high bristled trees
must fall as fall turn winter

we must, as time comes
fall over and die
but we shan't do it alone-

yes... together

for we must die
and while many years shall go by
until we must think of such things

we need not mourn this fate
this ominous end, this opening gate
for just being allowed to die

makes us lucky

for the number of people unborn
the acceptance of existence- torn
shadows any number we could see

more than the grains of sand
in the sahara, and
more than the fishes in the sea

and of those unborn ghosts
are greater poets, better hosts
better scientists, never to put on lab coats

when thinking of the billions  
that could be here replacing the millions
making our existences seem small and meek

against these stupefying odds
you and I, no scourge of the gods
in all our ordinariness

well we...

we are the lucky ones.

1) Grow up
2) Obey rules
3) Go to school
4) Graduate from school
5) Go to college
6) Get a job
7) Marry
8) Have kids
9) Raise your kids to live the same repeated cycle you did
10) Die.

Because everybody wants to live ordinarily.
Each process inevitably leads you to the next. The cycle goes on and on and on. We are breeding generations that are far worse off than the last. We are destructive humans who live in our own little worlds. We refuse to see the bigger picture because we are trapped
In society's cage.

Congratulations on living the life of a human.

water's gravity
moors me to this dome's prison.

washing me to plush blue
is the dream of hands
that puts me out of my sleep's premises.

the bane of existence tingles
the flesh and the suds rise
altogether with the squalor
of its own meaning.
my old hue languishes into
a burgeon of slosh and no friction
nor word could rupture me anymore.

and the scent dangles
mid-air, where all perfumes are born, with sorry fountainheads
peaking through the ordeal
of this sonata.
water makes music with skin
as froth takes to sea, the exhaustion of brine -
all disquiet in foreword
and finality

hung clean, in the backyard
of ordinariness, of consummate asepsis and its breakable concepts,
  ready to be worn out
by a day's grime and back to
its fate once more, all of us.

You ask me how I find the time,
But time is not the issue,
For they, are all prepared, needing only recognition,
For they, are all in readiness, needing only composition

I see a toddler swaying, see him to disaster lurching,
Somehow avoided with last second seer-like swerving,
Ten times in a ten foot walk across a patio,
My eyes code red at the incredible risk/reward ratio,
It is nature at it most incredible, miraculous, ordinariness

A young girl of ten wears a pocketbook across her forearm,
In the style of an elderly woman, as she plays with Barbie,
Tho her body immature, her psyche, says note my
Iconology, her accoutrement, texts a message subtly,
I am preteen, I am near woman, treat me accordingly

Dueling iPads in bed is a poem in my head,
rhymes accurate of screen reflections of an
X factor that stimulates my cerebral cortex.
Verbal ointment that I posses can't fix a flat tire,
but sets me up for a personal review, self awareness
Gone mad and with finger, on gas station floor,
In the grime, words are realized/written concretely,
what my heart speaks freely

Within each day, miracles present themselves,
Gauntlets thrown, note them well and be justified,
Visions, external to my physical self,
Yet product of internal chemical reactions
That blow through my veins, swirling,
Word leaves, on a November weekend,
Windswept from a thousand directions,

So you ask me how I find the time,
The question proper be amended,
How do the times find me,
How do I know them,
And why, do I share them

“Aren’t we just like curtains?” I say
“How?” you ask

Well, curtains
We never really appreciate them
Until they’re gone
Not until we feel the bustling heat
Penetrate our skins during summer
Or when we can no longer hide ourselves
From the light and the world around us
When we’re already too tired to deal
With anyone, really
Because we took off
Those **** curtains

We speak of lines that spell diamonds
Majestic cars and palaces
But we fail to realize how this ordinary object
Can make a whole difference whenever
We wake up in morning
Sitting in bed, tiredly remembering what
We were going to do today
A small choice, packed with a lot of meaning
Whether we want to stay inside
Or go out and meet the world


Serving as a doorway
To the possibilities each day brings
These curtains show us the days worth living (and hiding from, if that's what you want)

And if you don’t find that ordinariness beautiful
If you don't find those moments where we stand up and try to survive the long day ahead of us
Often just waiting to see those familiar curtains again amazing
Nor can you see how curtain-like we all actually are
Then try having no curtains for a day
And see what I mean

The extraordinary man
woke up as ordinary
as a ***** shirt,
checked his horoscope
which told him
to go back to bed.

He ignored it like
a weather report
just as often
wrong as right.

His coffee tasted
flat as ironed dreams.

The world
appeared unchanged.

But he was exhilarated.

He reveled in his
new ordinariness.

It hinted at a rebirth
of possibilities:
new boots, new roads,
a new moon
at which to howl.

A new way to be
in the same world,
but reborn.

An unspoken prayer
somehow answered.

Nothing is
ever over
until it is.

  ~mce

All this time I had thought
it was rock versus air
and then came the day
we exchanged names,
because there was no other way
because all those others we adored
were no less than infinite
and you cannot trap sunlight
in your hands.
Our communion was instinct,
a song from the deepest cave
and our love is like the friction
of bowstring against violin,
there as long as green vines
continue to crawl up bricks.
There as long as the cynics
ignore the saws of radiant light
that cut through the fault lines
of their enemies skin.
Our love is the final resort
of metaphors, the place they go
to rest in peace, the farmers
overalls. You greet me
without a smile, at your front door,
paint chipped, hair that tells the story
of your difficult day and I remind myself
that means and ends
are both offspring and kin.

We met like they all do, second
glances, eyes wearing the best
kind of suspicion, an exchange
of names, insidious
and innocent.

Today I encountered the most holy
of holies, all cloaked in ordinariness,
sawdust, flowers, and paper clips,
and our love is like any other,
making us feel as though
that we are the last
to witness it .