Writing Exercise 2007

I came here to write and write I shall.

There is a woman in black slacks, searching her quilted purse for a lighter, walking to her car, checking her messages, most likely from grandchildren who barely speak to her but to get her paycheck.  It’s 7:00 p.m., I always wonder when I’m staring out my downtown apartment who has to be at work so early or so late.  What benefit do they get?  Are they wearing monogramed watches?  Do they get perks?  Or are they subject to the jerks I’ve known my whole life.  She, who works well, with difficult people.

I got a blue writing desk.  

I have seven windows.

The last time I wrote for exercise was 2007, I was in the same city, in what was considered the Poet’s District.  Now, I live in the Library District.   Still alone, drinking cheap red wine, listening to alternative music that brings me down to my own level, missing you, ten years later and every version in between.

Fire escape and brick by mortar brick buildings surround me.  I am fireproof and lonely.

I am five stories high, always wondering what the jump would be like, my windows have no screen.  My silence has no scream.  My sirens have no dream.

Skip ad.

Next song.

There are cones down Baltimore Avenue, under construction.

The light on 11^th turns green and there’s no one there to go.

Two more walk out from the building, onto the lot, striding like office stoners.  Maybe their day was long because they are slow.   He whips out a cigarette like he’s about to toss dice, lightening fast to light it, ignited.  His compatriot walks to the edge of the lot and waves goodbye.  We separate so easily at the end of the day.

All the windows in the old buildings have dripped.  Like tears in the buckets of old lady eyes, sinking through the cracks of age and seeping out the sides of their cheeks, where only sadness and laugh lines meet.

Today, I described my last relationship like opening a can of tuna.  You know, that scraping metal to open sound, circular and jagged.  You press the tin to the meat of it, drain it out and then leave it in the fridge, pushing it back in its container, further and further, because you aren’t as hungry as you thought you were.

The violin plays deeply, weepingly and the man in the alley is running hard, something he doesn’t own in hand and back pack bouncing – he is looking back the same way I use to when I thought of all the wrong I’d ever done to you.  Don’t pretend you know…who.  Fat and checkered, tired and weathered, the blonde, red armed mother walks to her car – another day and dollar and her children sit in front of a TV, playing on their game console while their fathers opening a PBR, everything always waits until she comes home.

Here I am.

Postcards from downtown.

Letters from Kansas City.

This is where you forced me-

This is where you left me-

No, wait, this is where I started

again, and think of it, I left and never even confided in you,

dear old, friend.