The mornings are a disconnect. She names: intrinsic, innate, inborn, difficulty, and he says: well, try.

I have cuts and bruises all over my body; nothing remarkable; purples where my body collide with firm structure, slice-grooves where the metal-encased necks of expensive fluid warn me not to grip so tight.

I want to ask if I am going the wrong way, but no one will have the answer for me, so I don't ask. Their machinaries are input destination, output best directions; the systems arbitrary.

The sun falls through the skylight, and I could get to know these wayward stories of strangers more or less doing the same thing, or I could know the slouch in my back when I accept my tiredness, which I do not.

Blade, blade, stretch & flex, wings in flight.


---


I met a stranger and he fancies me a tortured artist type, one of those New York City creatives with up & down mood swings, & funky dark & light work in result, so I look out the window at nothing in particular, and take a nice stretch, a tense and relax in upper back muscles that cradle my spine, and I rotate down with the appreciating of my bones, & flesh as strong as bones, warming up like a dancer before irrelevant mirrors.

I think of dying, withering narcissuses.

Sometimes we become what we love, but that was a half-naked thought. I think it'd be magnificent, one day, to have a beautiful woman do a veiled striptease, except as she strips down, for each piece of fabric pulled invitingly from the tempting form of her body, there is nothing, but the other side of the world.

at one of my favorite haunts, after a movie, at an old theatre, in an aging part of the city, i am idling with the color & mood of whiskey in a solid rock glass. see, the whiskey, is just a beautiful, clear liquid under dim light, a coffee so i can sit and be alone in a place where people are trying not to be alone.

a stranger sits besides me, & begins his practiced dance of conversation, so i do what most young, unbruised souls do, in a bar, i give a smile back for his efforts. it's quite late. he names his accomplishments & snarks on some other writer. he is a good looking thirty-something year old, and he goes on and on, and then, i say, that is great. so what're you doing here? and he gives some reason. and then i turn back to my untouched drink, and i ask, as kindly as possible, so what're you fighting about with your girlfriend? and his face falls. he apologizes. i tell him that he'll be okay.