reflecting on babbling brooks
She often wondered how she would look back through the old and dusty drawers of her memories at these days. Rickety chairs in the big kitchen. Cigarettes on the fire escape. Brooklyn bound cabs. These days of being an American in America…
402. It was an eleven-hour drive from number 16. 16 Oak Street, that is, where Demeris Joann kept FOX news on in the background as she hobbled Lysoling the house. Both homes were Americans living in America, but somehow she wondered how the same country could be seen so differently by women of the same blood.
402, more specifically 3F in number 402, was wood floored, noisy, and cluttered with newly acquired old books. Singular walls were painted, piles of paper were strewn about with hopes that eventually they would be recycled. Laughing, smoking, reveling in being bright young things. Politics off the lips and on the minds. Maps of where we’d been and where we were going.
402 had lovers. More than most. Raw kisses on drunken Saturday nights, and promises of phone calls the day after. It also had the other kind. Slow, deep, controlled, breathed into the mouth of the other, as spines curve and hips dig into cotton brown sheets. It had breakfast in bed, and touching of feet under the cover while they read at the same time, different books.
It acquired things over time; a record player, a water-stained coffee table, frames, chipped dishes and plates. The books abounded, and the guests were prevalent. It acquired memories, new hair fashions, tattoos, tears, boyfriends, bouts of flu, and the inevitable dirty dishes and clutter.
Eleven-hours and exactly one world away she was becoming herself, dancing on these wooden floors of 402. A person that number 16 did not recognize or always appreciate. But that was also part of the allure of growing, changing, molding, eleven hours and one world away. Understanding what they knew, and knowing that she knew the same. But she knew that it was all wrong and there must be someone somewhere who knew better. A better way of life, A better way of sleeping, sex, loving, earning, marrying, not marrying. A better way of being. A better way of being an American in America. She had tried at 20 in Spain, 1109 in London, and 50 in his arms, and here she was at 402. Hoping to hard wood dance her way into the right way.
402. It was an eleven-hour drive from number 16. 16 Oak Street, that is, where Demeris Joann kept FOX news on in the background as she hobbled Lysoling the house. Both homes were Americans living in America, but somehow she wondered how the same country could be seen so differently by women of the same blood.
402, more specifically 3F in number 402, was wood floored, noisy, and cluttered with newly acquired old books. Singular walls were painted, piles of paper were strewn about with hopes that eventually they would be recycled. Laughing, smoking, reveling in being bright young things. Politics off the lips and on the minds. Maps of where we’d been and where we were going.
402 had lovers. More than most. Raw kisses on drunken Saturday nights, and promises of phone calls the day after. It also had the other kind. Slow, deep, controlled, breathed into the mouth of the other, as spines curve and hips dig into cotton brown sheets. It had breakfast in bed, and touching of feet under the cover while they read at the same time, different books.
It acquired things over time; a record player, a water-stained coffee table, frames, chipped dishes and plates. The books abounded, and the guests were prevalent. It acquired memories, new hair fashions, tattoos, tears, boyfriends, bouts of flu, and the inevitable dirty dishes and clutter.
Eleven-hours and exactly one world away she was becoming herself, dancing on these wooden floors of 402. A person that number 16 did not recognize or always appreciate. But that was also part of the allure of growing, changing, molding, eleven hours and one world away. Understanding what they knew, and knowing that she knew the same. But she knew that it was all wrong and there must be someone somewhere who knew better. A better way of life, A better way of sleeping, sex, loving, earning, marrying, not marrying. A better way of being. A better way of being an American in America. She had tried at 20 in Spain, 1109 in London, and 50 in his arms, and here she was at 402. Hoping to hard wood dance her way into the right way.