ICH GEBE IMMER NOCH MEIN BESTES

UND FRAG MICH, OB ES GENUG IST

9:28am, the subway
where everything else fades away
they got drake, they got wayne
a striped dress, every kind of phone
jagged wall of sound. manhattan is an island
and brooklyn its vessel. my quiet apartment
in wait, frames leaning in stacks
against the walls.

once upon the 1st evening in july
I rode the citibike to williamsburg
and screamed the lyrics to “boy’s a liar pt. II”
at a stranger in a bar and afterwards we walked
his friends’ dog along the east river boardwalk.
two summers before I ran along
that same path in a video, screaming
lyrics that mimicked my own heartbreak,
wondering if I would ever not feel
like all my bones were shattered,
moving around like invisible spears in my body,
threatening to cut me open from the inside out.

I touch the stranger’s face and it is like
reading a book in a foreign script
out loud, yet knowing all the words.
we talk and watch the sun rise
unbeknownst to the other, we are somehow
of the same thread, two people who consider
sushi a food group, and adventure a primary
reason to live. I want to talk to him for hours
and yet, I also want to say nothing,
just stare at one another with wonder.

how many people can be tied to a place?
how many broken bones hearts how much evil?

I thought perhaps I’d hear nashville and only think
of one fated weekend, one time I’d lost my mind
instead:

the master manipulator sends letters postmarked
tennessee. I change my address

a lonely man held me on his sofa watching ghost
stories. I learned what it meant to be used

come october my fingers will fumble out the song
the first fall, the harvest festival, I felt like god
thinking we were illegible but beautiful, bodies in a seaman’s knot
that there would be no other, until suddenly there was
no one at all

new york: the only place I’ve seen do a 180
from late summer to winter in eight hours. I drink coffee
with my ghost on a park bench
who says he was hoping to run into me
though there are eight million people
crawling like roaches through the crevices of the streets,
throwing up on the hoods of cars, brunching on sundays,
running the marathon, and we live
on opposite ends of brooklyn. I walk
with my ghost along the hudson, through the east village
and point out the places seven years ago
where I saw him and he looked right through me,
where we drank
a milkshake and a cappuccino at 2am,
the long-gone froyo store, the strand (still standing),
where he said he loved me. I thought
I’d had enough surprises to last a lifetime (and the next)
but instead we are walking on 14th street
and I am grieving four years of my life, bent over backwards
with bruises on my collarbone, wondering why
I couldn’t be enough
for the ghost. saltwater drips down my cheeks,
remembering
trying to shrink myself into a loveable size.
it was not meant to be— not then, and not now.

whatever mean bone is in mybody is there
whereyouleftit

the trombonist in the subway plays
marvin’s room, my heart peeks out of my boots,
it has been snowing all day but not a single
flake stuck to the ground.
I’m not crying new york I swear !
it’s just the way I can’t seem to get out
of this repeating cycle
of believing in the wrong thing.

a little kid in front of me swings around
the subway pole. I told the lady who took
three vials of my blood today that I might like
having a daughter. she tells me she had gastric bypass
seven years ago. we both regard our limbs like
foreign objects. I was doing better !!!!!!

just a moment longer
I want to feel whatever the feeling is of

believing.

for two more minutes, for one more lifetime.
my fingers reaching for it, standing
on tiptoes, trying to

pretend this moment is forever and not
a few more weeks.

but I know better than to think
anyone feels things the same way I do

it has only burned the palms
of my hands and feet in the past

and I know better than anyone—

not a single line
about the sunset over the atlantic ocean
the port in copenhagen, the brightly colored houses

santal 33 all over my wrists and neck
the darkness of 11:38pm is made of whispers

I am only blue paint brushed on a brick wall
a now-cracked bowl on your kitchen counter
discarded again, fizzled out, smoke and broken mirrors

this is it, always
chased by the wolves, mauled by bears
carried home on the shoulder blades of grass

no one

an unknown, not to solve for
I awake again, scared of mornings and the politics of living
life seeps out of the jagged edges of soul
alone again