(1)

A dim red glow blinks at me, I blink back
6 30 a breath : in 6 30 a breath : out
“Iiit’s the morning show with—” and press SNOOZE before it begins,
to dive back under the comforter and breathe cotton.
My sheet fragrance is organic thread and faint coconut, and
I wish cotton thread didn’t smell the same underneath
our own scents. Your pillow covers smelled like this, layered
cologne, Axe deodorant, then strongly of you, like a boy
desperately claiming to be a man.

(2)

At the foot of the bed, I am clutching a pillow
striped blue on white and Hellboy plays at him
while the television glare falls on me. He types
taktaktaktak TAK taktaktak taktak (DELETE)
I am distracting, and thinking about things I think then
that I cannot say. I shouldn’t have,

(3)

or could—? Tones waver in the air, the nightstand ringing
cutting into him. He stares into the sun
strong and blinding, and flinches, then
laments how she often broke his staring contest
with the late afternoon, standing
in just that spot, grumbling
that she never could reach him by dialing.
“Was it so hard to answer your phone?”
No. Perhaps I wish I had.

(4)

We do inappropriate things at inappropriate times,
when did 6 30 become
7 15 : 7 15 leap : 7 16 entangled in a sheet : 7 16
stumble mumbling Christ! trip free, scramble into the shower
7 17 : ?

It is raining blood and sweat and tears in Jakarta
though you are not home (I thank God for this);
it smells like murder and money in New York City
but all I can do
is read and talk incessantly, about Indonesian casualties.

(5)

We are creatures of habit
because even worlds apart
some might argue decades,
we sit cross-legged, sipping:
yours unrelenting and bitter, of black double brew
mine sweet, almost sickeningly creamy and embarrassingly beige
the joke was always “would you like some coffee with your milk?”;
backs or feet—but some part of you nonetheless, and me—
against cold hardwood, wondering reluctantly and regretfully
how alone the other is

or if
someone else twirls her fingers in his hair
someone else bites at her ear between sarcastic remarks

or if
such habits fall away with the people who cultivated them
leaving shadows of neuroses
and hands that know nothing besides to fidget,
clammy, uncomfortable
beneath vivacious conversations
about international politics and war or
the unfair softness of cosmopolitan palms,
bred in relativity of luxury.

(6)

There are 10,042 miles from safety to the falling sky
give or take, from where she begins and he ends.

The news sputtering on about Southeast Asia
she doesn’t remember turning on,

and so
she wakes up with a jolt
90 days, 2 hours, and 3 years between them.

For him, it is dinnertime in company
teetering on drunk, that he can taste
imaginary cumin on the chicken and that
Bitang beer is irreconcilably Heineken, so

with a grimace and the same
90 days, 2 hours, and 3 years between them
he curses the involuntary nature of thoughts,

(7)

but hearts leap, don’t they?,
where hands and feet won’t dare reach.

Creed

I believe it all starts at the end.  I believe I’ll never
catch my breath unless someone else does it for me.
I believe in winter but going outside naked; we’ll all
make it through alive if we just have some thick
skin.  I believe in love before the lover.  Don’t tell
me to describe what will be my perfect man, ask
instead.  Does he, in you, stir up more than feeling,
does he answer no he doesn’t when I say yes he
does, does he warrant unintentional innuendo?
What is he doing in you?  I believe in breakfast
foods for dinner.  I believe in chivalry to a point,
and in Sesame Street Band-aids.  Someone once
called me a brand-name whore, and I agreed.  I
believe in crunchy over creamy.  I believe in
dropping names outside of conversation and I
believe if a poem has books, Odysseus, maybe it’s
time to come home.  I believe in I won’t leave a
number but I’ll call you back later.  I believe in fake
jade rings.  I believe there’s no gain in being a good
keeper of secrets, and in mementos.  I believe in a
jazz thirty-second note.  I believe I’ll be from New
York forever, “no shirt, no shoes, no service”
promotes equal rights but is missing something far
more important, and that any city that speaks every
native tongue plus –lish effortlessly has left its mark
on the world.  Everything bagel with vegetable
cream cheese (breakfast), sushi or a salad midday,
Indian? Middle Eastern? Greek, maybe (first
dinner), and any other Asia for the second—yes, I
have a fetish.  I believe in new underwear and
sleeping in men’s pajamas; I believe the sun is not a
star and that the world cannot end in 2012.  I
believe in simplicity and serendipity.  I believe the
strongest only come from the weakest and that, like
me, they only fear what they have overcome,
because the second time around, the secret to
winning has become a blur.  I believe in never
kissing the ground anyone walks on and only being
made for a few things at a time in life; yours his
mine the world’s footsteps a secret only allowed out
with permission, after curfews, and under a certain
influence.

creed

i believe in ice cream, more specifically tin roof sundae
because frozen fudge swirls are a type of therapy.  i believe in
primitive philosophy, and i believe in advanced, intellectual,
well-read philosphy, too, but that philosophy first
is the necessity, and validation is sometimes nothing
but an embarrassment.  i believe intelligence is hidden beneath
eloquence and communication, and the shallow are unfortunate
in never knowing what they’ve missed.
i believe in talking to, knowing, and loving a single person at a time.
i don’t think i believe in fate but i believe i wish i did.
i believe wishing for fate is a desperate desire to know
things will turn out alright in the end, and that desire
cannot impact belief.  get over it.

i believe getting over people who have since left your life is the
most difficult thing, and that though
“the one who is rejected comes to embody the good,”
it’s not a question of morals.  it’s a question of losses which can’t be helped.
i believe in losses.  i believe i lost my heart to this city.  i believe
i’m not sorry that i didn’t know any better.  (but sometimes i wish:
if only i had cut my losses and left it there.)
i believe in coincidences.  i believe in long-awaited endings
that are really just beginnings.  i believe in consistency
but also in change only because it is inevitable.

i believe in music, unconventional comfort foods, hugs,
and that sometimes all you need is the sound of someone
else’s breathing and the essence of a second heartbeat
to keep you going.  i believe in French romance
because they toast sneezes:
to your desires once, and to your loves in succession.
i believe there is something to my dreams i have never before
allowed a fighting chance.  i may not be able to save the world,
but maybe i should try.

third try

last night as i drove home in the snow
from my new lover’s apartment (i never liked the word lover.
i started using it after we broke up the second time. you hate the word as much as i)
my mind drifted to memories i once wished i could erase
like our first snowball fight at the park i fell in love with
even before i knew you lived nearby.

God was screwing around this February
snow before President’s Day
rain on valentine’s and your last name
on the license plate in front of me. fucking hell, i never notice license plates

i shouldn’t have to justify why i almost called you last night
almost left a message and said i miss my life with you
but i kept following the license plate without meaning to until i
stopped matching speed and realized i’d forgotten where i was going.
your number is still ninth on speed dial, which only you know means you’re the most important
it’s my favorite number. i had to get off the highway and compose myself
before i finally remembered my boyfriend’s name. i asked him if he’d seen me recently
he sounded worried
i said i’d go back to his place.
the next thing i remember is turning the corner six blocks away from my building
and ringing your doorbell.

the two of us broke up because as friends, you made me deliriously happy
i’ll never forget the time you actually convinced me to make a snow angel
i got so sick that day and you made me this horrible chicken soup that
we ended up conning our friends into eating, just to try it
but i think that if there’s such a thing as two people meant to be
they only figure it out after going through some crazy-ass process of failures.

i say this with complete honesty and belief in the idea
because i woke up in your arms with the television you weren’t watching softly on ny1
i opened my eyes to page 97 of the curious incident of the dog in the night-time
which you were rereading over my shoulder. your head rested next to mine,
and we said at the same time
“Mark Haddon is a genius, isn’t he?”
“your hair smells nice.”
both were true. i’m going to call my (very soon-to-be) ex today, whose name still escapes me
and then i’m going to watch television on your sofa with your blanket in your pajamas.
mine are six blocks away and that is too far to travel when
our togetherness is once again this fragile.

i should be doing any number of things, including but not limited to:

1. finishing my poem for a conference at which i’m presenting later this month
2. homework, but my book is at school
3. drawing, for real (okay, maybe later)
4. storyboarding.  several of these items require creativity, which isn’t compatible with ADD-worthy restlessness
5. casting, but that is directly impacted by how much storyboarding gets done
6. looking for furniture
7. exercise? (???)

what i want to do: recruit friends to order chinese takeout and watch a movie.  it’s very much a cozy, stay-indoors activity.  alas, i’m in the wrong town – though, i think i’m moving; and once during my sophomore year when i called the chinese place for delivery, they said, “no.  we’re too tired,” and hung up on me…but when my roommate called them a few minutes later, they took our order and brought our food without complaint.  whatever that means about my phone etiquette, and given the current road conditions, i get the feeling i shouldn’t try my chances at getting someone to deliver.  (also i’d have to order $20 worth of food for myself.  while i’ve done this before, i probably should not.)

so this is what i do instead, because no one will talk to me:

but wait, there’s more…

in conclusion, somebody please talk to me.  my left eye is bloodshot, from all the photoshop.  (i don’t have illustrator.)

edit: somebody else wants chinese, and the roads have melted.  yay.  i’m out, after 46 hours inside!

her real name is katie uva and she had a performance last night at arlene’s grocery.  even though i’d been anxiously awaiting this since june!, unposted train delays made me turn around in the middle of manhattan.  if not for the tornado warning (seriously), i might’ve spent an extra $2.25 of a return subway ride to deliver a remorseful personal apology, but i sent her a guilty text, instead, à la badly-executed breakup.  sorry, the fates were against me.  as it was, i initially thought i wasn’t going to be so lucky to go – but for logistics’ sake, not because the F train decided to live up to its name.

note the precautionary “ALL 21+” tag on the arlene’s grocery website.  i’m still 20, mostly without qualms, but this was upsetting.  my excitement crushed by my own birthday.  but katie doesn’t take any injustice lying down.  she added me to her VIP list.  so that was one heartbreak oh-so-close to being saved.  i came home and grocery-shopped my disappointment away, and then it rained on me.

the problem of not being 21 has reared its misshapen head many a time, and not once yet because of questionable beverages.  forgive the childish protest: they taste yucky.  maybe later.  but what’s the deal?  about a month ago i was strolling through union square with someone and stopped short in front of a bar brimming with people our age, except that we were a few months shy of permitted entry.  september 29, 2009 may be a tuesday, but i’ll be claiming my right to venture in. (funnily enough, that isn’t the highest age limitation yet – 23 is when you’re defaulted to financially responsible for yourself, according to the federal government; and 25 is when you can rent a car. as i have neither a license nor job, i am not yet applicable to either.)

i do have an itch to know who dwells behind doors off-limits to me. and why? living in new york often requires some kind of network, or else it can become quite lonely in a city of 8 million. people who come to new york for school or move here later live entirely different lives from the people who grew up here, left for college, and suddenly came back to find their friends all over the place. some of my “homies” (i.e. k8ee) and i also have an additional factor of going to a high school that collected us from corners of the five boroughs. thus, many of us don’t even have neighborhood friends left during awkward summers.  the last time i went to a local school was in 1996.

maybe i’m an unintentional snob. i’ve always kept carefully-chosen friends; even throughout high school many of them were never from new york city to begin with. which means this: when i go on vacations, i’ll have a ball. but impromptu meet-and-greets are harder to come by. there’s a commute involved in asking most of my friends out for the night, and i suppose i don’t have enough acquaintances. yes, there are other places to meet people just to have an interesting, intelligent conversation, but none as are intriguing as the ones that are off-limits but so very, very popular, such as the bar.

the 21-year-old k8ee mostly agrees with me.  check out katie’s myspace.  my personal favorite is “the man at the delicatessen,” a fact the june 4th audience at the bowery poetry club knows well.  though i’ll never tell why i love it so, go ahead and ask her.  she’d rat me out in a heartbeat.

i should plug mention briefly another young person slightly older than myself, julian smith.  i’m jealous, and apparently fangirling?, as i do not know him and don’t anticipate meeting him.  since i am embarrassed by this, i’ll just suggest you subscribe on youtube and leave it at that.  i can fangirl about katie.  knowing her enables the abuse of friendship privileges.  that reminds me, i have something to ask her.