where do you go when you're lonely? i'll follow you.
There are two men in my life right now: one who won't commit to me, and one who can't let me commit to him. I learned a painful thing from the two Georges, that one half plus one half equals nothing. I can't make them into one man, synthesizing their antonyms (film/television, serious/cordial, raw/proper) any more than I can make myself two women. When it comes to clothes, I can do math: skirt plus knee socks equals pants. But men are not so easily matched and paired. I already know how this will end: one will drift away, I will run from the other and lose myself in poems again. Perhaps my own poems.
And if it was love I really wanted, I'd be fine, because love is Brooklyn and I have it. Every night I sit on my steps and say goodnight to the Empire State building, seeing what mood she is in. Whenever it snows, the lights are the brightest white I have ever known. I am writing poems again. Yesterday there was a moon over Delancey Street that poked its little hesitant finger out to me. In my heart, I'm as hungry as ever. Even if two halves cancel each other out rather than make a whole I am not at all empty. This city rewards you for not breaking, and she has given me an inlet that became a river. If anything breaks me now, it will not be the chips of paint or the uneven pieces of wood but my own silly, untied fingers. In my next life I will be a surrealist and walk everywhere on my hands, no longer trusting my feet. Brooklyn will be as foreign to me as Casablanca, as all great loves are upon re-encounter. What was the film where they promised to meet at the top of the Empire State building? I will meet you on my front steps, even though they are being demolished in June. I will be the last person ever to sleep in this particular room in this particular house in this particular city.