Kneeling on concrete, cold where the floor meets bare skin, hands chalky from flipping pages, from breathing in wisdom, that old book smell. Now here, looking out at bricks and fire escapes and one ways in the Pearl District, sitting at a counter in a room that almost just smells like bodies, pretending to belong.
Fingers trace the spines of small press chapbooks, eyes ache with too-old contacts, with sleepless nights, with life (there's life in these words; there's life in this complication; this is life. We were missing it before). We're all aspiring writers: what are you going to do to stand out?
I'm more and more rapidly approaching the point of just wanting to say "fuck it" and do this. Fuck distance. Fuck social expectations. Fuck the rational or the right or the over-thinking. If I say fuck enough, will that make me a hipster?
I'm a person who needs to reach out and hold on to things, which is why God and conversations are hard and people and letters are easier. I need something to dig my nails into when I get scared, when my heart starts pounding, anything to stop the shaking. I'm not saying you can't leave. I'm just saying, don't be mad if I accidentally hold your hand every second that we're together because that makes you more real; that means that you're not just inside my head; that makes you distinct from me and could there be anything quite so liberating as coming into real-life contact with another individual, with someone who is not the crazy mess that is everything my senses take in, but is you, is real, is solid, is something that is not me. You mean, I don't have to be isolated all the time? Shut the fuck up.
In conclusion, this city is a hipster zoo and my breath is only steaming up the glass.
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