once on a bench twice on a bench.

"I'm not very good at making friends." I said.

"...I'll be your friend," he said.

My ice cream cone melted slowly like the silence. Slowly as our speech. Slowly like the time was eaten up as I stared up at the tops of the low buildings and the fire escapes in the distance. The dusty blue sky---the moments we were separate---but together and what was to be slipped away from us somewhere into the invisible distance, twirling and gold and unreal.

There was something removed about us.

Somehow in my previous lives, I was never able to remove myself. I always clung too fast, and pushed others until it was impossible to exist beside them.

And why is it like that with you? Removed.

I can leave early. I can say goodbye first, pushing down the urges I have to grab your hand from behind your back as you quickly stride ahead of me with your larger, sturdier gait. We have this space...

All I wanted was to be pushed up against a wall and held down by the way you breathe.

We left soon thereafter. It was a nice night. Perhaps I had a hair out of place, but for all the wrong reasons.

I wondered if it would always be this way.

On the short ride home I wanted nothing but to feel the wind hit my face.

"Everything will be all right", I said into your salty earlobe.

The silence that followed was lengthy, and left me wondering whether or not that was true.

streaming.

I’ll write you a small story. Listening to small music while scraping by and laughing upon bedclothes that will soon become threadbare with neglect. The dirty clothes piling up in a corner, I tried to hide them behind my hamper containing wrinkled clean clothes I haven’t made the time to fold and I keep getting these bills in the mail i store them in my top dresser drawer like I will someday pay them but I think the bill collectors will call first. I’m such a bad adult, I still want to play like a child and I don’t want to do it under the influence but I think that’s what bad adults do so I’ll just drink a large glass of white wine and keep on touching you. It’s what I do best. I want to be pretty like the photographs I’ve seen of other people. I’ll just work on my soul, because I fly free without religion, with bare beliefs. I’m just like several coins in your palm. You suit me for today and not any further because really today and yesterday are all I know...

Reasons I Should Not Kill Myself

1. Once when I was walking around 21st and 5th, I saw a man across the street. He was not a normal man. He was a man dressed in a "Flava-Flav" costume he had made himself. Out of naked, unpainted cardboard. He appeared to be alone. It was not Halloween.

2. Once on a particularly awful NYC evening I was waiting for the L at Union Square. I was severely depressed. Then all the sudden, I saw him. A large clown. He ambled toward me, big shoes and all. My mood went from suicidal, to unshakable fear, and finally to good humor, in about ten seconds flat.