it's a college party
even though i never finished and the rest of y'all are spending money you don't have on the ingredients necessary for homemade sangria so you can drink the crippling anxiety of not knowing how to pay off your student loans away

there's a man living in a tent in the backyard, and i'm pretty sure we put one too many pieces of scrap wood in that very-hard-to-maintain bonfire. that has to be a metaphor for the state of most of our lives. stop throwing things i'm unprepared for in what already feels like a situation that is going to **** me.

is this a literal housewarming

i'm drunk, and sitting on the deck, counting the christmas lights. i smell ****, and there are white people dancing and singing to blink 182 inside.

i paint my name on a drywall with a brush and canisters i find on my way to the living room, where i'm asked to referee a game of beer pong. i lose interest quickly.

i scroll through my phone, sober enough not to text you but drunk enough to desperately want to. someone sits down next to me because i've apparently become that person at the party.

i talk about rent with a guy who really wants to connect on the fact that we're both middle eastern, even though i'm not middle eastern. he smells like PBR and completely believes what he's saying. he says he's proud of me for following my dreams of coming to new york and that he likes my "crazy hair" and that he wants to **** me.

i raise my eyebrows, more in disgust than interest, but he then takes his perceived cue to shamelessly ask me if i have a ******. i don't, and i leave before he brainstorms any alternatives i am just as aversive to.

ironically, i find a ****** dispenser attached to a tree on the walk to the subway. considering the amount of catcalling i experienced on the way to the station, my level of discomfort is amplified by the fact that the neighbourhood literally, physically implies, ******* is going to happen in the streets. it's 2am, and i just want to go home. and i'm sitting on the J train, recalling everyone who's told me it's shady and unreliable and makes you feel like you're going to die.

a few months later, i am nicknamed J train.

Lean out and contemplate the Empire State.
After all, there's nothing else left to you.
The spider-web paths of the city
Branch out too often to form the whole
picture in your head more than a few
stems out.

Where do your lost hours go?
Is there a heaven for the good ones?
The ones you spend reading Harry Potter
in Spanish?
As if it's really so much better than reading
trash like 1Q84 or Plato's Republic
for 1200 page-intervals of excess language or
A bunch of questionable assertions
backing up logical conclusions on the most essential questions,
Respectively.

When I sit with the bright light in my eyes,
it triggers the breakdown of melatonin molecules in
my blood,
Among other things.
Will this restore my Brooklyn Majesty
in swells of lightwave tides
Or will it lack the broad spectrum necessary
to push my half-developed form out of the tidal pool
to make a swim amongst
frail men in shark suits?