by Jac Shihadeh
On the way to the city yesterday, I thought I was going to die in the tunnel with a Bible open in the backseat. I looked out the rearview to gauge how much time we had left, Mom talked about the apocalypse, and suddenly we’re spit out on a Manhattan street.
It’s funny how that happens. How I’m here again and I’m me
whoever that is these days. These days I drive fast down suburban streets and scream because no one can hear me.
I said, drop me off on Canal Street please. I’m not sure when I’ll be back. I thought I was over the commotion and the way the Rubber Supply Co sign looks at five pm. On the corner there is a man who stands with two AM New Y ork newspapers in his hands screaming for peace and I believe the theory of relativity proves the existence of god at a warehouse on a Brooklyn street.
I’m walking. In transit — my skin. There is a woman:
on the platform we are both waiting for the L train, going in the same direction, pacing back and forth
at the same speed. I’m silent, she’s talking:
They took the bug out of his nose. Removed the cartilage and the bone.
It seemed important, so I wrote it down with pen on my kneecaps and I took the train all the way to the graveyard with the tombs that rise over the tracks like mausoleums of moments.
Two twin boys press pictures of superheroes in capes against the window
watching the way they react to the sunlight. A memory, suddenly:
my best friend and I try to order lemonade at that cafe across from
the Foreign and Domestic Auto Body and the barista says: we don’t have anything left, this place is pretty much about to go under, lights a cigarette.
Now when I walk by, I just see my reflection in a dirty shop window.
Moments like these — meaningless, dying as we make them. Free of paranoid persecutory delusions. At Peace with the city occupying my brain power. The breakers turned on, permanently.
Constant reminders of the things that used to be home, such as: the
“I’m sorry” hallmark card on the sidewalk addressed To Jen that hadn’t yet dissolved with the rain and the men counting money at the pizza shop, cat in the window. Squeak of the gate, face of my landlady, wheezing, radiator in my room. Spent afternoons lying in bed. W ake up at midnight and go work the door at the party again.
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