24

From loneliness a strange curve downward, from a place where all that’s left to do is turn from the world. Friends, we made a pact. We said, New York if nothing else. New York if nothing, and if nothing, let’s make everything of what we have together and the things that keep falling out of our way, feel further than they should be, the distance that keeps being drawn again and again. I want to say ink, say pencil, say thin line of graphite drawn around or a small line of salt poured around a home, a line of peonies to indicate something which was never spoken, a wanting-begging-searching-hoping-for. See the back of this page? I thought I’d be living there but it never happened, hasn’t yet—I still have to write it all out, can’t make understanding unfold into the shape of forgiveness, still have to sit in the morning sun on the back porch, find specks of white paint stuck to me. These days I need to remind myself to drink water, brush my teeth, eat some food before the next meeting about making a wormhole out of here. Writing is the strand that walks across the void, the somethingnothing twine of waking up too early and being unable to go back to sleep because it’s garbage day or someone’s drag racing down the boulevard. Writing is the place I asked to be everything and learned it could only be that: words and words. What’s the problem with reading that someone else has the same problem as you? That you have to accept it as real. I don’t want that; I’m a sucker for denial, which might be what this whole process is for me. One of unraveling the strings to accept the beating body and the whole world inside that can’t stop and must be tended to. What shape is that? A loosening. Language being gratitude, air.