What are we going to talk about when we meet?
I already can see day reflecting in your eyes
As we sit in the garden
And put it all down before us
The afternoon’s annoyances
Along with the salad
And the tabbouleh
It is like that sometimes
Everything laid on cloth
The plain terribleness of life so clean
Like crumbs
How are you doing?
I am precisely the same!
I can’t wait to see you!
Yesterday I saw a boy in a gallery
Who was more like a ghost
This was on twenty fifth street
They and another intern sat behind a massive desk like cherubim
I asked them directions to another gallery
And we locked eyes briefly
Perhaps long enough to transact some memory in them
See, my brother used to know this ghost
Used to speak to them through other channels
But no longer
Well it’s like the beginning and the end
Feed into each other so indiscriminately
And we are caught
In the voracious middle somewhere
Making chic the act of being devoured
There were so many things to see and no time
I took lavender truvada bubble tea at five pm
It went down sugar and bespoke
They make this urban space into a sort of boutique style of living
And call it a marketplace
What are you up to?
I can’t stop thinking about your jawline and lashes
This is a love letter
You should not read it to your friends
What time is it in Paris?
I need to know how to think of you
What garments you might be slipping into
Who you are meeting and where
Here in New York I am dirty and alive
But you know what
At this red-lit bar earlier we ate a large order of frites
It was greasy and nice
And I had this thought
That maybe the source of all my anxiety
And mental squabble
Is not knowing how someone thinks of me
Isn’t that horrible?
To want so doggedly to be “liked”
To even lose sleep over it
That I would go so far as to augment some section
Of my personhood
Just to be fuckable, passable, whatever
I mean the older I get the sexier I feel
But still it feels like filling in the blanks a lot
Like a sexual mad lib
Can you imagine
Trying to be something you want
Knowing that’s a pretty shallow lake to dive into
Knowing we are all fake and real
And trying to be someone’s sexy thing
Someone’s good evening
Well sometimes dick can heal me
And sometimes it’s just getting paid
I once fucked the really beautiful son of an opera singer
Who told me about growing up near Lincoln Center
And seeing his beautiful mother singing on stage
He had a really perfect dick
And I rode on top of him
And he took a picture of the stick n poke tattoo on my arm while inside me
Then flipped me around and finished me so good
After we came, lying in bed exhausted listening to his music
He spoke to the ceiling: Siri, volume down
Still totally naked and the music lowered
Like we had just fucked in the belly of a large powerful woman
I walked home caffeinated, marveling at the decaying city
The way beauty can enter you like that and it’s communion
And there’s democracy in it entering you
Because what you realize is that it’s something that belongs to all of us
It’s not the truth, or good, or evil
Just an undeniable trace of life
A train is coming
And what happens to the New Yorkers without homes when they die?
Life is so short and yet just keeps going
And it’s not even impressive
It’s just music to me, something to discern
I just keep going, keep living
I paid my rent eleven days late this month
Hurtling underground, I think I am ready to be fallen in love with
