matchbook

plit peach, bitten autumnal predawn. A few planets still visible here and there. No moon, no sun yet. Flocks of pigeons congregate and flurry from turret to turret. Silhouetted so they look like crows. Some even caw instead of coo, a strange, sloped, atonal imitation, but similar enough that a few things occur to you. One, domestication must be permanent, for how many generations ago were these birds brought overseas as pets only to be abandoned by their owners, left to scavenge and imprint on whoever would care for them? Two, the second most intelligent life-form, at least by colonial standards, available to shepherd the pigeons would have to be crows. Or (and this makes you smile because you’re still trying to parse out where you fit in the ongoing crumble of human history) ravens.

Living alone has already made you kind of weird. You were never really the type to talk to yourself. You’d always subject the nearest person to whatever thoughts you were having. The sentient world was your external hard drive. You intended to save everything in people. Conjecture, gossip, secrets, what you had or didn’t have for breakfast this morning. Now you say you need to keep a diary, but you haven’t made good on that yet. Digital is too impersonal. Too many distractions. Analog and you start to think about whoever comes next. Your kids. Your grandkids. You want them to know you were here but you also can’t bring yourself to tell them why or how. Anyways, now you talk to yourself. Your GPS says the train station, which you can already kind of navigate to without help, is a twenty minute walk away. You say “I can make it fifteen” to yourself. Like this is a mid-tens action movie. Like it matters. And you do.

          It took a lot to convince you getting a train to New York was worthwhile. One thing about your new place, you seldom wish to leave it for very long. There’s a colorway you set up in part due to the ivory vinyl couches you inherited from the previous tenant, who left in a hurry. Everything else, you curated. The wrought-iron Italian coffee table. The white corner shelf with the blue and gold floral backing. It’s the exact same blue as the microwave you got for free from that artist. In the bedroom, two lamps made of fool’s gold, carved to look like tree trunks. Your white metal four-poster canopy bed, which squeaks way too much and you need to tighten it up here and there, but it’s what you wanted when you were a thirteen year old girl, imagining your thirties like a dollhouse where nothing goes wrong.

          You had your coming of age ceremony then. Your we’enh offered you a spoonful of berries and asked you what you wanted. You had to answer three times before you took them. I want my mother fed. I want my sisters fed. I want the other children to be fed like I am.

          In Baltimore, you stared at the immense God’s-eye patterned rug you’ve spread out. The diamond glass you filled with copper wire lights. Their flicker. Fireflies, you realized. It’s supposed to look like a jar of fireflies. You couldn’t leave. You wanted to lay here and sink into it. Your beautiful home. But you rallied and you drove to the train station to get your ticket to New York because you did already pay for the night owl fare back, so. Can’t come home if you never go away.

          At dinner with your aunt yesterday, you tell her about a friend of yours who will be nominated for an Academy Award. Specifically, you tell her someone asked you if you knew the friend, but in the way you ask someone “do you know this band?” Have you heard of them? Did you see that show yet? And you haven’t been saying “yes” truthfully. You’ve just nodded or shrugged. Your aunt said, “You’re protective.” You fell silent because yes, that’s what it is. There was a certain way you talked about this person in the land before fame. Now you have to adjust because there was something sacred in the past with them and it will take honor to keep it present. This is another reason you are en route to New York. There’s a chance you’ll see them, hold their hand for a split second. 

          It takes a long time for the sun to rise. When it does, your train passes over a body of water, so there are two suns, blood orange. Though you’re in the quiet car, the kind person next to you whispers, “Now isn’t that pretty? There’s something you don’t see every day.”

          You smile and nod, but you haven’t spoken to another person yet.

          There’s a new set of thoughts you dwell on these days. War. Famine. Furniture. Love. Real love, not the platitude or Hallmark card, but the awful, grotesque, violent thing that, when handled with the proper care, has turned your heart into molten glowing fields of forsythia. A light in the dark cavern of your chest. Not a fire, not really, but a mirrored surface, gold and holy. There are dangerous questions in your mouth right now. Sublingual. You wonder if you’ll ever be strong enough to ask them.

          In a dream, your famous friend asks you what you want. They mean a lot of things. Career, mostly. Where do you see yourself in five years? Where is this going? Why did you set this world down when you did, and are you going to pick it all back up? 

          You answer them. I want my mother fed. I want my brothers and sisters and their children to be fed. I want you to be fed like I am.