Two Bad Days

MONDAY PART ONE

While I wait for the train at the Beacon station, after telling my mother during our goodbye that I was doing fine, I find myself choking up.

Ninety minutes later I start crying at the urinal in Grand Central but no one notices because the bathroom is already filled with deranged people.

I manage to get to work, my new job which is actually the resuming of an old job, and I'm tense. Thirty minutes later I get a distressing phone call and thirty minutes after that I am exiled outside, asked to clear out for a while while my boss works on another project. I wander through Brooklyn and try to take pictures.

I end up in Brooklyn heights, at a familiar Starbucks, and buy an oatmeal cookie and an iced tea. I intend to head to the Promenade but stop on the steps of abandoned store, with my cookie and my drink.

I put the Starbucks bag in my pocket because I can't bring myself to throw it away. I feel like a piece of trash caught in the wind.

I want to go home and remember I don't have one.

MONDAY PART TWO

I found a deer tick on my side today, already engorged with my blood, fat and flat like a pumpkin seed. I've had lyme disease before and I've said well past the point of it being funny: I don't recommend it. When simple pulling doesn't work, I offer to have it cut out of me.

It will be fine, I suppose, but this discovery makes me think about my mortality, about what should be important.

I'm on the subway, shuttling under the water to the train station, where I'll go to what passes for a home. I'm uneasy. It feels like this train, this tunnel, could be a passage to another world, to the other world. The car we're in is neither overcrowded nor sparse, and I study the faces of strangers. On this train all our lives are rendered meaningless by our anonymity.

I remember.

It's hard having to go to the doctor alone, he said.

I stepped closer, thinking I would be sweet. You don't have to be alone any more, I said.

We're all alone, he said.

I catch myself remembering, aware that my memories feed off me. They grow engorged, eclipsing the future I should be planning.

I wish there was a way to cut them out.

(4.12.10)

TUESDAY PART ONE

I'm just a cliche. I know it, standing and smoking a cigarette in the rain, listening to sad songs and crying.

I remember when you first told me you loved me, where we were standing. I could go stand there now, but you're not here. I'd cried then too, almost, because I'd been thinking the same thing and I'd been afraid to say it.

Maybe I should have been more afraid.

I didn't want to be that person anymore, so afraid of getting hurt that I'd keep myself outside the fray. I still don't, instead continuing to poison myself with fond memories and hope. The sad songs don't help.

Now I think I know why you won't see me.

TUESDAY PART TWO

The pain is different now, familiar. I've been here before. It's not a welcoming place but I know the terrain. That part is comforting.

There's a sadness, mostly for what's gone, but partially for the fact that I think I know how the story will go from here.

(4.13.10)