I.
In this life we buy ice at 7/11. We make watery gin and tonics and force ourselves to walk to the bar we moved to be closer to. The neighborhood shrinks into the hum of construction project; upstairs, now to the left, now to the right. It slurps up all the good lobes of your brain and leaves only the temporal and occipital: the most useless. I forget how to behave around silence. We decide to hang a plant in front of the sink to block out the cinder block building sandwiched against ours. We smoke on the fire escape, which is all the way at the other end of the building. Another commute. Everything’s a commute. To work, to store, to a second location we would rather have avoided. To your side of the bed once a week for posterity. I notice my shoes filling with dust. The apartment must be collapsing. Or someone moved in upstairs and they’re fucking so vigorously it’s sending down flakes of ceiling. It could be a good life. It would not be quiet.
II.
On Marathon we lend out patience. An apartment with no stairs, only elevator. God forbid the Big One. The shaft shudders open and we drip into the street and walk to the grocery store, the same chain as our old place. We buy nice furniture. A couch with ornate mahogany feet, a Persian rug with two worn spots. We ask who might have stood like that, motionless for years to make the mark. You guess that they were probably stomping up and down, it wouldn’t happen that way otherwise. Anyways, we tuck the feet under a dresser. It’s dark until 4 pm in the summer, just like my old apartment, then fills with warm and fleeting light. For about 30 minutes we are grateful to face west. We live at the point where three freeways meet. Cars shriek and seethe by, etching the highway, approaching like a wave and crashing into the next lane. I wake with a start.
III.
On Sunset we walk and walk and walk. We get to Mid City and realize there’s nothing. There’s nothing in this city and there never has been, and so we turn around and walk back, and you say it makes you feel useless and we pass another place where someone has inquired about their taxes, or had their toe painted, or spent a thimble of an hour. The apartment is nice enough; there’s one good window that faces something green, some invasive tree with wide leaves. You say I don’t pay enough attention. I leave late sometimes and get back heavy with smoke. We’re a short walk from everything, but somehow there’s still nothing to do. I make a lot of friends who talk on the phone to someone else while we’re together. I get a ouija board and forget it outside, trying to release whatever’s in there. I learn to take the bus. The sink backs up and sometimes makes a sound like retching on an empty stomach. We joke that it’s hungover, and you point your tongue in specific and stimulating places. I am honest for once in my life.
IV.
On Rowena I retreat. I tell you why and you don’t believe me. I have always lived in apartments that faced West, and I can’t stand to be neglected by that direction. The light only comes from the east now, and I prefer to watch it exit. You bring me cold presses and make congee, spoon-feed me until you realize I will never get better, and these motions are futile. You start leaving your shoes outside the door. Then one day you walk in and I'm better. Flush around the waist and hungry for all things food and boy. By morning I am watching the short squat building across the street, looking for movement. It’s a wellness spa with low ceilings and no clients. The refrigerator has made a hum since we bought it. The world is a close walk.
V.
On Ulysses we loaf. You make bread and I eat fewer slices than you. We share a marijuana cigarette. We walk to the top of the best hill we’ll know the whole time we live in Los Angeles. We see it from many angles, from many elevations, staggered along the most stable faultlines. Where we’re going we won’t need that. We make small talk in the kitchen. We kiss in public because everywhere is public. You call me smooth, you call me soft. I strike the air with my fist. I get better, I leave it all behind.
VI.
At the door, no less. We meet people at the laundromat, the cashier at the corner of Sunset, the waitress smoking on her break outside. I walk to the bookstore, and I don’t even mind that I don’t have money because I’ve finally learned to steal. I’ve overcome guilt for good. Now I borrow books and lend them to myself, I check them out and check them in, I have a strong oak bookcase that I found at the St. Vincent de Paul. We have a snake plant that catches the light. Hadn’t seen the sun until now, and she crawls towards it like Eve to apple. I’m funnier when I’m drunk, they say. We find an orange ottoman with silk tassels on the street. We brush our teeth one at a time, and then sometimes together. It’s one hell of a way to be.☞
You are very talented. Damn.
This captured so many different little things for me - the para on walking up the hill! Super keen to see how your prose develops - this has a lot of echoes with the stuff I write. Happily subscribed:)
this is so beautiful ❤️