Pearl Street

Boulder you are a stranger to me. A man told me I could take a picture of him for a dollar.  You have the longest hair I've ever seen. Pretentious Europeans in their mother's glasses sunbathe their leather coats. 1960's revival. Extravagant homelessness. You play this game well. I'm sorry Boulder, I'm out of cash. I gave my last buck to the man playing a didgeridoo. I don't belong here, I'm sure. We used to climb the roofs at night and drink champagne. He fell asleep on my feet. I'm sorry, still. I forgot to feed the cat. Boulder, you don't grow tired of this? People line up every day to watch this man fold himself into a box. Seven stores that sell exclusively yoga pants. Put some shoes on, Boulder. Comb your damn hair. We used to sleep on top of the bar, we climbed the dumpsters in the alley and drank chamomile tea. You wear your heart on your sleeve, Boulder. Mine is somewhere beneath the mohair sweater. You let a cigarette burning in the grass. I feel like wax on your organic apple. Someone needs to clean me with a vegetable brush.

Edna

I feel like Edna, trapped on my Louisiana porch, arrested by the humidity and listening to a parrot squawk shit it heard Adele say last week. We emerged ourselves in infinity, swam naked in the ocean, under the moon, thought about the shapes the stars made, before Galileo taught us about gravity and I believed that there was fishing line stretched thin between the planets. I feel like Edna, leaving you in favor of the one room house around the block where I can eat tea cakes alone in my bay window and write about the water. I'm self-indulgent. I want solitude and decadence. I will refuse to make sacrifices for you. My thighs rub together. They will rub together in the water, in the Gulf, when I'm waiting for my legs to tire. I feel like the woman I wrote about, smoking cigarettes in her red dress, drawing a bird in the sand and speaking in tongues about canvases. Darling, you are simply not among us. Maybe that is me. Maybe I'm the woman who will leave her family to live in a downtown flat when she's fifty.