Nothing on this street agrees with me.
I say it again, because you say a thing twice when it's stopped working, as if saying it twice is going to kick it back on.Thisis about Paul.The sentence is hollow in my mouth. A shape without meat in it.
I have a problem.
I have a clear, nameable problem. The problem is standing in a corner of a city at midnight saying a sentence out loud and the sentence isn't working. When a sentence stops working a man has to put a new sentence in its place. I don't have a new sentence. I refuse to put one there. I keep trying the old one.
My loft is on the fourth floor.
I get up there without seeing anyone in the hallway. I close the door. I lock it. I take off the jacket. I toss it across the back of the chair where the light won't hit the stain and I'll deal with it in the morning.
I go to the bathroom.
I look in the mirror.
My eyes are my father's eyes. That's a thing I've been trying not to notice since I turned twenty-five and my face settled into itself. I notice it tonight because tonight my face looks like my father's face looked when my father was about to do something bad.
I stare at it.
My father hit my mother. My father hit me. My father hit a lot of people. My father isn't the man I am. I know this the way I know where the blue line is.
I stare at the face.
“You are not him,” I say out loud, to the mirror.
The mirror is easier to talk to than the bench. The mirror can see me.
“You are not him. This isn't that.”
I watch my face as I say it.
I watch my face watch me say it.
The face doesn't look convinced.
I go to bed.
The bed is cold. The sheets are one set behind on the wash. The pillow smells like me. I lie on my back with my hands on my chest, a position I haven't slept in since I was a child, and I stare at the ceiling.
I try the frame one more time.
This is about Paul.
The frame is a pane of glass. The glass has a crack down the middle. Behind the glass there's a boy in an alley, a boy in a bar, a boy in a locked bedroom, a boy whose face opened under my hand. I can't put the glass back together tonight. I can't throw it out. I can't stand up and find a new one.
I close my eyes.
I see him.
I see him how I've been seeing him since I walked out of the alley. Behind my eyes, in the dark, close enough that if I reached, I'd touch his shoulder.
I open my eyes.
I keep them open.
I stare at the ceiling until morning.
I don't sleep.
