lived in bars and danced on tables

because deadline is over and i want to hang out with chan marshall

with no lodestar in sight

(music to read by)
I escape sometimes, when the city becomes its darkest, when some of the lights finally dim, when light bulbs flicker, exhausted, crinkling before they become something to trip over in corners of apartments overlooking the Brooklyn Bridge. After talking about Melbourne to our waitress who hopes to make it big in film here in New York City, I retreated, for just a minute, to the darkest part of the bar to breathe and search in vain for a juke box. How many times have the stories I watched play out happened before? The numbers being asked for, the girls in their red skirts and tall boots crying on the sidewalks, the musicians heaving their drum sets off blue truck beds, all the lonely hope.

because the city lights are fading

a song to fall asleep by

the smallness of us

tonight: watching Y Tu Mama Tambien and drinking beer and dreaming of the Mexican countryside and packing for camping and i'm happy. i can't wait for lakes and dirt under fingernails and cheeks pressed to grass and friends who have seen you grow up. there will be guitar at night and card games and more beer and, my favorite, the fires. everything is so perfect in the light of a campfire, skin glowing, silently, people basking in the smallness of us.

this is how it works

I feel small today, in the way that makes me want to sleep in blue hostel rooms and train cars smelling of cumin and wave goodbye to you and recede behind the Moroccan hills permanently burned into memory. I want sand and dunes and freezing cold showers and me when I was so far away and never going to return. I worry, sometimes, that I will always be like this - ready to jump, grass-stains and all, into the sublimely temporary. I worry I will never know where I belong - or, worse, that I already know and that I'll never go.

define temptation

The rain won't stop and I take the time to believe it's June. It's all reading and writing and wine and music this weekend, and the prospect of summer teases me and I fall headfirst for its thunderstorms that giggle and save me and destroy everything. I refuse to take my bathing suit off and imagine it all smells like honeysuckle and my friend writes to me about a road trip south, across the border and maybe we'll just keep going. But, for now, it's late nights and talks on porches and I hold my breath, slightly, until I waver and exhale.

come into my world, I've got to show, show, show you

Oh it is spring and I play Regina Spektor in my car and everyone is in yellow skirts and they twirl and we all exchange small smiles in our eyes. My concentration is shot to hell these days and all I can do is sing along and talk about the Czech Republic to the guy selling cotton candy in Central Park and Thai peanut sauce is all over my shirt, all the time. What I mean is, how do you say the words you know you'll never say? And what happens when you never say them? Life, I suppose.