masks & stages

the station always smells like feet & stale cigarettes. makes me miss the mta & the way the subway stations always smelled like dirty puddles, stagnant water, & piss. like steel & copper. & out on the street, the whiff of nut carts or halal trucks or beef patties or korean barbecue, depending on the stop. everything here is tinged with meth & a layer of sadness i don’t recall in any place i’ve been blessed enough to call home. now i’m drunk again on a train a hundred miles away. what state is this? what state of mind is this? the spam calls keep coming through even though there’s no service as if they’re emergency services. breathing cleaner through the mask. it’s new. kn95 & ocd. i miss stumbling home down busy streets feeling like a meteor shooting through the night, like i belonged to the constellation being formed by all the lit up folk on their stoops. climbing telephone poles in my mind & using the wires to zipline. i miss brooklyn. i don’t miss the shoeboxes & the envelopes. miss the view from the williamsburg bridge. all graffiti & who even is she? my tongue is numb. i don’t miss kissing strangers in bars, but i do miss feeling seen, wanted. the way i crave a menthol. turning my lungs into this station, all sour & decaying. i am body & nothing more & i can’t even ice skate. can’t walk a straight line or ride a bike in traffic. so what use are these limbs, are these phalanges? it’s time to switch to tea, but i’ve never been good at taking my own advice or anyone else’s for that matter. sitting on a park bench, freezing to my bones while he apologizes but doesn’t mean it & knowing straight to those frigid bones that i don’t even care about the hollowness & the vapid & the shell shock. seeing myself through these eyes is like seeing them through my own only more disingenuous, shallow, broken. even the psych ward rejected me. there is wretchedness here that can’t be absorbed by prozac. can’t be flushed down the toilet or washed down the drain. when everything clears, it’s the spoils that remain. the behavior is less cognitive, more reflex & reaction. the divisible infraction. a misty shoreline & expanding waistline. what was it i was trying to say again? the caffeine feels like speed in my veins, but i am home here in this little town that made me bitter & jaded at such a young age. maybe i am the grim reaper, the child of hades. maybe i am no one at all. just weak-willed & projecting a magnification of who i wish i was. tiresome. dreary. faking orgasms to not hurt their feelings. can’t even embody truth when splayed & flayed. spatchcocked. carved out. always liar, despite the urge to projectile vomit on the bathroom tiles. mama says i’m always on stage, playing the villain, the mistress, damsel in distress. contempt & resentment & disappointment galore. i scare them away with my inability to meet their eye & i won’t fight to keep them. won’t force them to stay. intimidation factor, my wounds on display, still unable to approach the altar or make my sacrifice. or pray the way they say. all the hymns have changed rhythm & it feels i no longer belong. my failures have led me back here. back to the roots. everywhere you go, there you are. & here i am, back where i began.