nothing new

everything at 20 and nothing at 25

“Miss me because of the heights that I scaled to get to you, from the bottom of my confidence…up, up, to where reality is.”

I have a hankering today to be by the river, to walk along the South Bank from Tate to the Eye like I did back then. Back then, when we took 30,000 steps into blistering sores on our day of arrival; back then, when I was young and spry and moldy, moldable… I mean, easily molded. My heart made of marzipan and resembling a pear, a pearl, a daisy on the dash.

Am I so hardened? Limescale layered by nights of city rain, coat one, coat two thousand, and I am sulphurous and immovable, except by a strong wind and violin.

Into my life has waltzed a perfect fable, a stable and affectionate tale like something for which I would have gotten onto my knees and begged back in apple township, but I am again suddenly seventeen and callous. I push, I steel. I calcify. I am immovable, except by drizzled honey and prose. Is it them? Or is it me?

I find myself thinking back to when my organs were made of almond paste and cherry bakewell spread on Regency lawn, caramel shortbread in little squares scattering from heathered cliff; when the contrails above a moving river were sailboats on the sea; when I gave that tart pastry over in entirety, jammy and red, to careful hands and unknown calamity, finality like certain but holy death; when I was twenty and felt everything, knew everything. I knew everything like this is it, what more? Them or me?

I find myself reaching back to wide windowpane above 28th and 10th amid scarlet warehouse, screaming emotion down a pentatonic scale because I was leaving someone who did not want me anyway. You’re fair, and I’m insane. I’m insane along the Hudson, I beg; I’m insane under goose-feather sky, I beg and cry, and well, I am twenty-five. I feel something, I know nothing like what now, what next? Them or me?

Today, I walked down Camden High Street and purchased a pair of shoes even though I am on the precipice of credit card debt. Was it them (the kind store associate)? Or is it me?

Tonight, I will find my way to South Bank again, nearer Tate than the Eye, and scale the heights of my avoidance…up, up, to where the 12th knot is. I will spot again St. Paul’s, the Walkie Talkie, the Thames, a silver sliver in time. I will take 30,000 steps in my mind, and I will try to be moldy. Onto my organs now crummy, crumbled… I mean, made of crumb and encrusted, I will pour a Guinness, G split, and knead until we have again something like marcipan, feel again something close to everything, and know just enough, like how next, we will hold hands across Millennium Bridge and a strong wind from atop the blackening Thames, from Tower Bridge, pearled on the horizon, from a first love five hops back in spacetime will move me, just slightly.

Tomorrow, I will walk down Camden High Street and return those shoes. I really did not need them anyway.

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a jenny slate phoebe bridgers taylor swift collab, a wee letter to riverside strolls. nothing more, just that it can be lovely to be confused in the heart. adore you, and good night, dear void.