I’m still completely stuck in the electric buzz of a broken city streetlight and the winterscape–the one that swallowed Philadelphia alive and when it snowed I stuck my tongue out on thirty-fourth and I tasted all of the metallic air mixed in with the little pieces of sky. Back then, I felt like we were all getting close, humanity’s skyscrapers melting in with the water as it heated and cooled in the sun and the rain, and all of the snow that was falling on my head so that when it melted and ran down my stands of hair, they felt washed and I felt new. I knew that I smiled once in the winter, a wide, toothy grin all because I could taste the buildings on my tongue and if the sky could taste like the buildings that surrounded me than certainly other things were right in the world–that other broken and abandoned windows could speak with God. But it was warm now, and I could feel it sinking into my bones because everything felt heavy. One more year, all of marked with failed moments and doubt. It all opened up before me and I looked out into my room. I could catalog in my head all of the colors of the walls.
The size, the white paint, the rug. I think about the piles of clothes, unfinished crafts and papers all over the desk. All of it. The posters hanging off the walls, the scotch tape, newsprint and also the wires tangled on the floor. I pull the fabric down to cover the windows and the light changes from natural to orange. I can feel the rug collecting the heat from my feet. It feels warm and I push my weight into the webs of my toes. The movement reminds me of putting my feet in water, all salt and sun washed. The AC unit kicks and makes a funny noise and my vision adjusts again, focusing back on the four walls, the weird collections of dust on the ceilings.
I sit down at the desk and push my toes against the carpet, my elbows hard against the wood. I think about roots. I think about them coming through my toes and into the carpet. The screen was still blank and I blinked a few more times. With no end to this pattern in sight, I fumble quickly with the corners of my cigarette box. I pull one quickly out and strike a match against the matchbox. And it was there, almost as quickly as the cigarette lit up, that thing. It was this image I couldn’t see and a feeling I knew was gone. It was that elusive thing that everyone tells you that you lose eventually. But I can’t remember what it was or when it happened. I can’t remember ever having it.
The saddest part was that I had been trying to do this for years and I laughed because it’s always been true that life is a mother fucking comedy.
Posted on June 26, 2011
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