it doesn’t sound like fighting, but the man is round shouldered and he talks loud. the dog pushes aside the vertical blinds and stares out at him, our neighbor standing in his driveway talking loud at somebody. it’s 7 a.m. and i want to get up and write, but i’m having a hard time. the new sheets are soft and it’s not so hot this morning and i miss jude, who is lying in bed not two inches from me. we didn’t see each other all day yesterday and our phones were cut off because we hadn’t paid the bill and she couldn’t send the secret naked pictures she took at work to remind me of the places i call home.
last night we switched sides on the bed and i kept getting confused in my sleep and turning the wrong way, turning to where she would be, turning to the mirror, to a dark undefined reflection of myself and of streaks of blue vertical lines coming through the window.
“did you walk the dog this morning,” she asks.
“i don’t remember,” i say, “i don’t remember when i walked her.”
she turns, throws her right leg around my body and holds me.
“did you use soap on your hair,” i ask, thinking about her walking into the shower last night before bed and complaining about not having any shampoo, showering because i told her she should. i couldn’t handle the smell of her sweat last night, sour like everything that goes bad in this small apartment. i loved sweat in new york, tickling my arms as it dripped down from my short sleeves down the inside of my elbow as we carried bags of groceries and a bottle of veuve clicquot we couldn’t afford down the steps of the union square station on to the sticky platform above the rat infested train tracks. i loved sweat then when it was the glue that kept us stuck on each other’s skin, kept our bones from falling like bent twigs into the fire, kept our lips from letting loose the words and the bluebirds we held inside, even when the alcohol was too much and i was standing on second avenue, screaming at the 300 pound bouncer outside bar none to come get some, even when later, walking down the narrow steps at the 14th street station to the L-train, she took a roundhouse right that just missed my chin because j. had disrespected her by putting her very large tits on my head. but there was no sweat though that early morning, our apartment glowing blue from the late moon or early sun, our clothes smelling of cigarettes and spilt lagers, when she jumped out of our mattress on the floor screaming, carrying a blanket to the futon where she dropped, her back to me, and i said to come back, to take it back, this thing we call our bed, this thing we call beauty, and as she moaned drunk on the futon i grabbed my bag and walked out into the 4 a.m. bushwick pavement, walking past the roasted chicken in the middle of the street and camus’s rats in the garbage bags. i was so sure at that moment that where i was headed toward was the edge of the world welcoming me with a wooden sign nailed to an old church pew, where creeks flow louder than birds or round mexican neighbors and meet at the base of a willow tree. and when the phone rang 3 hours later finding me asleep on a bench at union square park, a cop walking by as i smoothed my hair and wiped the spit from my chin, not bothering me because he too knew that i didn’t make it far enough, she asked where i was, where did i go. and i found my way back to the steps, to the train, to the ground beneath my ground.
she buries her face into my chin.
“i used the hotel shampoo we took from stardust,” she says. i hold her, pull her to me as the dog crawls up behind her. “you slept more with her than with me,” she says.
and i tell her that i was confused sleeping on this side of the bed, that i kept turning the wrong way to look for her, that my body remembers all the past journeys of nights, that i lost myself again in the dark, in my sleep, because it is hard to wash the blood of the dead from my skin with alcohol and hotel shampoo, and i hold her, hold her until there is no more need to care
this morning
about anything.
