I’m moving to New York, you’ll announce, describing the buildings like
A career, or a prophecy.
I’ll live in Brooklyn, you’ll explain,
Sketching a picture of your loft on a napkin.
Drawing your bodega like a church.
This place is only temporary, you’ll scoff,
Pushing aside your glass like it’s filthy.
Dropping a foot to the floor like you’re ready.
I’ll be out by March, you’ll laugh,
Resenting the sun for setting while you’re talking.
Looking around to count who’s not listening.

That April, as the sun is dozing on another empty beer,
You’ll trace a smiley face in the sweat.
I’ll be out by winter, you’ll blurt,
Shaking hair back to show that you mean it.
Looking the bartender in the eye.
New Orleans is my city, you’ll explain,
Describing the food as if you can taste it.
Pushing aside your fries like intruders.
I just need to get out, you’ll assert,
Holding your fork like a suitcase.
Fingering the bill like a passport.
I will miss you, you’ll add,
Holding your mouth like it’s nothing.
Waiting for someone to ask you to stay.

I flinch before it happens.
Not because I’ve changed my mind —
I’m already here and
the rivulet of sweat running through
your hairline
is driving me mad:
But I know what it’s like after this.
After this, it’s going to be harder
to untangle ourselves.
After this, my heart
will crystallize into glass.
It will shiver every time blood pumps through it,
and rattle when you touch my skin.
Every time it’s cold, or raining, or
someone bumps into me on the subway,
I’ll have to cross my arms to protect it,
because it’s not the muscle it once was.

This doesn’t mean what you think.
This just means my body
can’t feel the difference between
a one night stand and
a ring.
If we wake up next to each other once,
it thinks we always should.
It looks for you even when I’m
trying not to,
and wonders why we ignore each other in public.
Sometimes, it even
whispers your name at parties.
Is this normal?
I’m trying to be casual here,
but my chest is pretty brittle and
I’m just afraid you’ll be there when it
shatters.

Do you ever feel scared?

Scared for the future, but not in the way that you won’t figure things out — like that you’ll have a job you hate or something like that. More scared in that you feel overwhelmingly tiny and fragile — like your grandmother’s really old china that she keeps locked away in the dining room and won’t even let you carry to the table — and you know the world doesn’t care.

I mean, of course it doesn’t care. It’s just a thing — spinning mechanically, obliviously through the atmosphere, completely unaware of the little beings trying to build a life on its surface. And in return, we’re clinging to it, imposing meaning on the slightest change of the wind, hoping that at some point it will stop, just for a split-second, and let us know it’s okay.

But it won’t, of course. And we’ll have to keep going.

Sometimes it feels like we’re thrust into adulthood when our 5-year-old selves are still fully inside us, searching for Mom just underneath our adult skin. We thought that, once we turned 23, 25, 28, once we had jobs and homes of our own, we’d somehow morph into these capable beings who were sturdy enough to handle things.

What we didn’t realize is that the only way to become these beings is to keep plunging forward, despite feeling too young and breakable for the newfound truths that keep revealing themselves with each new day. Despite the hardships we haven’t experienced yet, but that make us cower even from the horizon. To shed that child bit by bit — and when, in moments of reflection life pans out in its overwhelming vastness all at once around us, to try not to look too closely.