digestion

wednesday in san francisco. bayview is just children over airplane hum and rush of freeway like water. freight trucks crashing across uneven on ramps and neon kids with wild hair fly by holding buckets of oatmeal, pins and needles and fish. the sun killing off any sad residue, wiping the table clean with windex and paper towels, yesterday grey and then the sky opens up with hail like a giant mouth and b is saying "i just dont understand" on the phone from oakland, having argentina dreams, delirious on making something happen, getting a plan, a plane, outta here and we both just laugh and say "i got nothing" despite these three whole weeks away. wednesday is weird like that, mid week, mid feelings and everyones calling on the phone, waiting for the weekend and stretching out their "im fines" lazy long like a cat.

its anything now, a song mostly, a word, an N train, rush of steamroller by my window at night, where i have restless dreams and wild thoughts and tired tremors, a third cup of coffee when your hand holding your cigarette is shaking, a face, the back of someones head, and its true, your aunt was right, you dont have to look very hard. you are everywhere.

i cant say your name without blushing, without uneasy stomach and nervous hands. i think about you in all of my writing and every sentence turns to you. it has been such an incredibly long week. i want to say i miss my friends, i miss you, but these words are even a fraction of how i feel. those words dont make sense anymore. saying i miss you is missing b, missing his smell while he is gone, but one i can still bring up, can still create, can still find in my sheets where i know he will return. missing him makes me ache, makes me sad and lonely and my heart hurt but it is a happy missing, it is the missing of something that fits, something that will hopefully return to its place again and lock in and all that missing will be worth something when he smoothes back my hair and calls me little lady right before sleep. there is no comparison. missing you, its like missing your youth, missing the way your mother used to be able to fix things, missing summer, that last summer before college, before moving away from home, missing the first drunk, the way nothing will compare to the first time he touched you, missing something that is lost, love that left you, love that you believed in and is now gone. the missing of something that will not, ultimately, ever return. the missing is easy, but what do you do with all that hurt?

graffiti walls fly by on the mint building, im on some bus, bringing me downtown to my boy, where all the buildings are grey and faces, red, wind chapped and unsmiling. i cant get there fast enough and all i want to do is hold him and say im so happy to see you because it will be true. and im into telling the truth right now. i get to the bar before him and reapply chapstick three times, come back from the bathroom and he is sitting there, making a face at me all the way from the back of the room. i sit down and he just says, you look so happy, and its funny how differently we see things, how much better i am at being myself than i thought, that what i had felt on the train over, the replaying of one song, the desperation, the sadness, the fear of not making great things, that all of that has been washed away on the walk to lukas, the trip to the bathroom, the staring at myself in the mirror, the placing of a smile on and seeing his face. seeing him waiting for me, that moments can change so quickly, that life moves so quickly.