A Morning in Los Angeles
This morning in my sleep, I received a letter from NYU:
You've been accepted for graduate study. The place doesn't
have a PhD program, but I moved there in my head and saw the faces
I knew in NY: Tyler, Mike, maybe Megan sometimes. Permanent dusk
over the city, the ever-heart pumping as it only does in dreams.
Who knew that it would be in those half-eye places, those locked
scenes, I'd find the most joy. That it could rip apart the buildings
on my way to work, the billboards reading INTERSTELLAR while a song
plays, "the stars in my eyes, were shimmering lies," where nostalgia
fell from every pore of the traffic tableau. A license plate frame alumni:
Whittier, USC, UCLA, Pomona, Parent-Paid, Poor, PoorerThanYouLookatmycar,
ItWasWorthBeingPoor, ItWasn'tWorthBeingPoor, ThisFrameWasaGift, Gift.
If days were gifts, why need the new watch, why talk about the new watch,
why talk about things? Jeff never responded to me after, "Maybe you're
right, maybe we shouldn't be friends." If you remember, you didn't like
being held in bed, you didn't like disappointing the wandering hands,
you didn't like watching yourself become a part of someone who wanted
something else, some other kind of nostalgia. It was during the next
line of that song, "the mourning dove sings, with two broken wings,"
when the door blew shut, when the show stopped, when the audience
stood up and stood up in roves, and walked out of the theatre, it was
when the light grew red, when the cars were honking at me, at each other,
it was when the sun hit the building as if it were covered in sequins,
when I saw the 189,997 miles on the dash, saw a raw pinata on the sidewalk,
a stuffed bear in the back window of an Audi, the tower on Olympic covered
in that flower paneling in ever-repair, listening to Waze direct me
as it has directed people through Beverly Hills neighborhoods where folks
who have nice porches never used, stand out front and get angry at all
the new visitors, it's when deleting your number didn't sting, when
there's nothing left to look over when it's been taken away, when
looking out over the city, I see all the cars waiting for lights to turn
green, that I turn the volume higher and head further West.
You've been accepted for graduate study. The place doesn't
have a PhD program, but I moved there in my head and saw the faces
I knew in NY: Tyler, Mike, maybe Megan sometimes. Permanent dusk
over the city, the ever-heart pumping as it only does in dreams.
Who knew that it would be in those half-eye places, those locked
scenes, I'd find the most joy. That it could rip apart the buildings
on my way to work, the billboards reading INTERSTELLAR while a song
plays, "the stars in my eyes, were shimmering lies," where nostalgia
fell from every pore of the traffic tableau. A license plate frame alumni:
Whittier, USC, UCLA, Pomona, Parent-Paid, Poor, PoorerThanYouLookatmycar,
ItWasWorthBeingPoor, ItWasn'tWorthBeingPoor, ThisFrameWasaGift, Gift.
If days were gifts, why need the new watch, why talk about the new watch,
why talk about things? Jeff never responded to me after, "Maybe you're
right, maybe we shouldn't be friends." If you remember, you didn't like
being held in bed, you didn't like disappointing the wandering hands,
you didn't like watching yourself become a part of someone who wanted
something else, some other kind of nostalgia. It was during the next
line of that song, "the mourning dove sings, with two broken wings,"
when the door blew shut, when the show stopped, when the audience
stood up and stood up in roves, and walked out of the theatre, it was
when the light grew red, when the cars were honking at me, at each other,
it was when the sun hit the building as if it were covered in sequins,
when I saw the 189,997 miles on the dash, saw a raw pinata on the sidewalk,
a stuffed bear in the back window of an Audi, the tower on Olympic covered
in that flower paneling in ever-repair, listening to Waze direct me
as it has directed people through Beverly Hills neighborhoods where folks
who have nice porches never used, stand out front and get angry at all
the new visitors, it's when deleting your number didn't sting, when
there's nothing left to look over when it's been taken away, when
looking out over the city, I see all the cars waiting for lights to turn
green, that I turn the volume higher and head further West.