From the Window of the Kitchen Where I Work

Spring unfurls under the grey New York sky and I kick slow through town, through home, between the shifting shops and restaurants, the library and the cemetery. The skyline grows and shifts as coral, millimeters a year, only noticeable through photographs and "Oh, I remember..." and "that was when..."

I walk the bridge and climb the hill toward the center of town, and the air is still cool mostly and the traffic is always impatient and in other parts of the country people smile when you catch their eye and here they look away or tighten their brow or mouth inaudible curses and it wraps around me, warm and comfortable. Fuck you. Get out of my goddamned way. How've you been?

The open mics are all gone now. The musicians have all moved or moved on. The drugs have become rare or weak. The joy has been sucked out. I kick through the town and I will get coffee and borrow a book from the library and walk home and enjoy


Not Drinking


and


Not Participating


and


Barely Existing.


This has all been a choice I have made. A search for a deeper meaning, or meaning at all. An attempt to center, or rescue myself.


From the kitchen where I work I gaze through the window at faces I have grown with over the last handful of years, people I didn't know in my previous life, people I will forget shortly in my next. Knocking through this town, building to building, lover to lover. Job to job, dream to dream. And where does it end? For me? We'll see. For them, please, o please, don't end here my friends.

I watch from the window of the kitchen where I work and morning, then day, then evening, and night. Morning, then day, evening, and night. I type in my employee number, clock in, clock out. Go home, every seven days I put away all but twenty dollars of my pay.

This grey New York sky.

Through the week I get mostly coffee at the coffee shop and sometimes I get food at a gas station and the rest of my money I hide away.

They all drink around me. Go out to eat. What's five dollars? Ten? Twenty? What else is there to do?


Grey.


What else is there to do in this town?

We come close. Hold each other. We kiss. We fuck. We cry. We start bands and we hold hands and we move in together and break apart and what else is there to do in this town.

Go out. Get drinks. Celebrate, commiserate.

Please, o please, don't end here my friends.

I dream.

I lay on my bed, in a small nearly attic room with slanted ceilings and a stuck open window and someone's old butterfly stickers glued to the wall. I lay on my bed and close my eyes and dream.

The window down. The forest sliding by. The road under me. I dream and I am moving. Fading into the air. Disappearing and if I never come home again good and if you never hear from me again I'm sorry and if I find myself... if I learn who I am...


The grey New York sky.


Lay on my bed and dream.


When I get enough money.


When I get my license back.


When I get out of this town.





We all wake up together and roll over together and go to work together.


We all live and love and dream together, we all waste and rot and fuck and snort and pretend together and





one of these days, I'm gonna leave this town.