facilis descensus Averno

Sunday 23^rd September:

I can’t possibly articulate how I feel about today. Right now my nose is congested and the pain punctuating my back refuses to subside, and my hair is a mess and I smell like a bar but under my sheath of discomfort is the shard of an ecstatic flame licking my wounds. It’s just that post-high plummet into lethargy that nips the tail of a successful day. My mind’s a monochrome slideshow interrupted by bursts of hyper-synthesized Technicolor. A mosaic of concrete and smog and then basking in Empyrean light, making Lucifer references, taking a left so naturally up the subway steps and through the iron-wrought gates not a prison but a welcome home, and him reclining so easily on the Grecian steps, all light and Zen and nonchalant glory restored, and the lightening rush of mint and bubbles, and the inexplicable scent of comfort and oversized jackets and pockets envelops her and the conjures the green light at the end of Gatsby’s dock dream of a point in the not too distant replication of this moment. Their synchronized bob and weave through the throngs of flustered sheep people and the skyscraper labyrinth, attune to the staccato of the metaphorical river churning state-lines away. It feels natural. Being there, being swallowed up by his gravity, his easy grace. Watching the sprawling white washed building capped with sea foam and dusted with gold taking flight. Recalling the tangible shadows of the fields where the obnoxious Brazilian boys wolf-whistled and played soccer, the stoop where they dangled brazen flip-flops, like lions surveying their pride, the hobbled stairs up to Dodge and Lewisohn, the aisle flanked with trees and streetlamps standing regally at attention as a gaggle of giggly females popped out for an in-between workshop bubble tea run. I need to be somewhere. Should be out somewhere, shopping, cracking a joke, keeping the group civil, but that thought is bowled over by a more self-indulgent notion of an afternoon of nothingness, aimlessness, and missed points that just fit. Because in the empire state of mind anything can happen, and in my mind it has happened, but in an abysmal corner of the closet getting really cramped with all the bones jutting out of the dark. And here I can gasp in the wisps of the unthinkable delusion, and pretend.

And everything’s still.

And then the brakes are screeching outside, and this burrito tastes like shit stuffed in a pillowcase, and he picks up the pink one with an indiscernible smile but (she) I misinterpret it anyway, and he’s shrugging his book bag on, and there’s a moment where the tension and the terror and the things that drive her (me) crazy past midnight come up for air, and she wonders if he can feel the tenuous fibers reaching out to change time and undo the mistake from years before.  But then they submerge themselves in casual waves and another miss, and she’s there alone holding a tray and shitty burrito, and a tiny glimmer of something like a talisman that only makes me (her) more desolate and confused than ever.