We stayed in the apartment of my sister's second grade best friend, an old school building with cracked walls and signs warning of rats, where the water pressure was hardly more than a trickle, slept less than seven hours because the night before we had to go watch women dance together, drunk and sweat-slicked beautiful. I stayed pressed to the wall, tired and slightly invisible, watched people, guessed genders quietly to myself, observed pedophilic music videos set to pulsating techno. Beauty. But I know there's only one person who would know what I mean by invisible and awkward in the crowd, and outside, under a crescent moon and a sky speckled with exactly two stars, I wanted to call him, tell him, it's beautiful here, but the sky is dark and lonely without your constellation, which was in my bed only hours ago, which was wonderful, and I'm feeling brick walls on buildings and wishing you on train tracks.
Sunday was voices, jubilant at asserting our right over our body, Sunday night was another six hours, another fifteen dollars in tolls, rest stops in Newark Delaware ("Hi, I'm in Delaware") dreams of horses, sleep in the back seat, midnight chai, rain on the parkway, sleeping soggy in my bed.
IwanttogoplacesIneedtofeelthingsIwantYouthereIwanttobeThere.
Last night, read my poetry to a room full of alumni, under the blankets and in rain and in libraries, felt alive.
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