another day
i wake and get dressed and talk with my roommates and make myself pretty. i leave the house and its raining, not much but enough to pull my hood over my head and begin the hunched shuffle to the subway. raindrops splatter my jacket, dark on green, a haphazard pattern. dry half moons under my breasts. i feel a little self conscious, and i want to hold my jacket out so the pattern can continue unheeded, but i don't because i know it is silly. "your fear of looking stupid is holding you back." i use the Franklin entrance today, and it is full of unfamiliar faces. i pretend not to see the eyes turned toward me, i look at the oncoming train on the other side of the track, i look at the ground, at my feet. i stop and lean against the wall, and taking out my kindle i become lost, all the way to west 4th street. and my book tells me about the west village, and antiques in dusty storefronts, and in the rainy grey morning i fall in love with the city again and again. even the beggar whose arm reaches into my path "change, please, help me get some food" and how he stands and shakes his coffee cup at me in the most inconvenient place on 6th avenue, where the bikes are parked outside of a deli and a rare sickly tree take up most of the sidewalk, and my tight smile at him as i duck my head and slide past the oncoming traffic. and there is something here that makes me sad, not my typical depression/frustration/sadness of being surrounded by commercialism and hurried people and wandering tourists, but sadness in a sweet, lingering way, of old crumbling buildings, of history that seeps like a slowly melting popsicle in between the cracks in the sidewalk, of lives lived and lost, of dreams long clutched, of prosperity and loss and hope and despair. my body tingles, flooded with emotion, forlorn and joyful. i imagine myself trailing history behind me, red and sticky trails on the sidewalk, imprints from my boots, and the syrup swirls in the pools of rain, a spreading pale pink puddle. i stop by my familiar cafe to get coffee and a chocolate croissant, the other nice girl is at the register today. "she said she was never coming back, and i was really, really hoping she wouldn't, but then she did! Hi, how are you?" i enter on 12th street and the flowers of the memorial strike me, painful, mournful, regretful. other employees, too old and too young to be students, speak of the deceased in the elevator, of coming into the building on Tuesday night and not seeing him there at his usual post. of the first hint that something was wrong. no one is around when i step off the elevator, when i enter the office, when i open my door and enter the dark cool space. and my window, it's narrow view of the east side, the rusty paint and streaks on the glass, it is a living painting, and a perfect mirror of my mood, of all that is inside of me right now that has no where else to go but here.