Drawing 11

Somedays I watch the crowds flickering, perched safely from my rest, wrapped in cotton and protected from the world. Somedays I look down from an ariel view, in the crispy prickle of the unconscious. Somedays I watch the wind. Somedays the pulse quickens, the coffee fills the brim, the wine spills onto the table. In the evenings the bathtub water pours onto the tile. Maybe I'm too mesmerized to care, too tempered to seep out of, I talk with a boy talking in his sleep.

Sometimes I manage strong and majestic, other times I make my grandmother's yellow cake at midnight to feel her company through the wafting cinnamon. Sometimes I tell you it will be ok. Somedays, will you tell me?

The city sleeps and I think of love. Listening to the Magnetic Fields. Pushing away lust. Joyful, simple, pleasant. Lips swollen from kissing. Pull my hair please. I feel a rush wash over me. Inquisitively. Want. love.

I have found newness and it will never be kissed.

Bask yourself in goodness.

I'm still a night girl, but I also wake up with the sun. It slants the bricks on the neighbor's chimney peachgold, and plays blind shaped shadows on my bare, white walls. It stares carefully through gaps in the tree leaves. It rests, carronade by tangerine and lavender, in the thin early fog. The cicadas and aren't up yet, and the birds still sing into their sleeping feathers. In the night, sound seems to be muffled, and the dark closes around you like a pink cashmere blanket. To be awake is to be alone, at odds with other people. You can almost hear their dreams, drifting like perfume in the quiet air. But the morning is expansive and crisp, like the taste of pineapple