| | I want to be...
Everywhere. In your arms. But I can never have both. It always comes back to that, doesn't it?
The days trickle away into the final week of the semester. I rode a Thanksgiving whirlwind through the Maine Mall, staring through Tara Donovan's millions of straws in the ICA, through frosted cookies and the spice of gingerbread and cold wind numbing my cheeks as we strode briskly through the streets of Allston, ears ringing from another concert in another bar on another weekend night. I rode a Chinatown bus south from one Cantonese-speaking enclave into a world resounding with the smoother tones of Mandarin, stepped out into the city that never sleeps and wandered in confused circles beneath the ground trying to find my way over to the Bronx. There were stories about breath freshners, there were moments spent contemplating Santiago the anole, there were beers and conversation and laughter, spicy shrimp pasta and grey skies.
Oh New York.
We dive into culture here, we are children puffing out our cheeks at wire hanging sculptures to see them dance in our exhalations...for the circus plays in the background and lions roar in fabric and string. I watch New York's pigeons tiptoe and peer, we chow down on hot pork buns and chew our way through the dilemmas of golden spandex, golden heels and the eternal quest for knee-high socks through SoHo. And we embrace the night in a burning blur of glowsticks and techno beats, a mouse head with bright shining eyes and gyrating dancers, in sketchy advances made and sweaty embraces with people I don't really want to know. I stay up till 5 a.m. in the city, in the city wide awake and cold and dancing, in the laughter and clicking heels and short skirts in the winter, in the smell of french fries and nuggets curling through the artificial light that keeps us wide-eyed tired until I walk home to curl up in bed for three hours, past the homeless guys sitting on the stoop of my hostel who are appreciative of my skirt.
The morning sees me leave early and walk the long blocks through Chinatown to brave the crowds who are competing for a bus to Philly. I stumble through the masses in sheer exhaustion, ask the driver if I can get off in Cherry Hill although I have no idea where it is; I nap nervously, listen to the strange rounded syllables of whatever language my seatmate is speaking incessantly into her phone, and wonder if I'll miss my stop.
Thanksgiving afternoon, and we are reunited a continent away from before. I shiver my way into the van after sitting outside huddled away from the wind for a solid half-hour, and it's all hugs and sleepy conversation, a much-needed shower, and food, food, food. It begins, and does not stop.
We are wanderers; we collided once. We trace routes through our histories to the moment where they intersected. We share comforting touches that mean everything, mean nothing. I look into these eyes and can smile and laugh in all these instants...there are prisms and swirls of light through rainbow glass; I am learning how to defile my red wine with Coke; there is conversation, and I listen. Texture of carpet beneath my back, a window into the darkness overhead, the plans we make and the roads we long to take. Place these glasses gently on the windowsill, and let me fail to see clearly through my heart instead. The night reaches long and through this all...
I still fail to sleep in tight embrace. Fail to wake up with the sun on two faces turned towards and into interlocked curvature. Turn back-to-back instead, past the pillowfights, past the stripped-off socks and the words that tumble between breaths and the tracery of dark hair on white sheets, and turn into the future instead. As it must be, for these bright blurry paths lead into a nothingness that could never be known collectively.
Turn into memories of dark pearls strung around necks, into mysteries of eyelash curlers, into spins on the dance floor and nights with this notebook in bed, with the desire to cry and the bursting of ephemeral, unnamed dreams; four walls and a stranger, and the music that plays on inside my head as she slumbers.
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| | Posted 12/5/2008 12:57 AM - 138 Views - 0 eProps - 0 comments
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