I Don't See You

Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York


"You're like see through. I don't see you. I don't need you." DIE ANTWOORD

"Why do you torture yourself?" she asked as I lay there digging through the pain.
"Because I've been cut too deep," I said.
"You get what you ask for."

She doesn't call. She doesn't call. She doesn't call...

I haven't slept. I toss in the darkness. The apartment is a cage. Sirens blaze by outside the windows. Images flash through my mind. I try to push them away, bury them. I've sweated through the sheets. I push them off the bed. My skin burns. I get up. I pace the shotgun rooms. I want to break something. I want it to end. I picture throwing the television out the fucking window. My head throbs. I knock the fucking lamp over. Sparks shower the floor. I feel sick. I lay down on the couch. It's impossible. I'm shaking. Something pulses from my gut through my body to the tips of my fingers. I need to get out of here. My arms are tingling as I flex my hands over and over again. My teeth grind. The TV is on but all I hear is screaming fucking noise. I picture putting my fist through the screen. I get up and turn it off. I can smell my own stench. I unclench and clench my fists. There is an indefinable ache in the center of my mind. I'm full of venom. The fans twist. The AC pushes stale air. I have nowhere to go.

I cried when she found my pain today. Afterward I spit up blood on the sidewalk as the sun died behind the skyscrapers. What are you staring at? I'll fuckin' hurt you. He slowly looked away. The dead fish rotted in the heat. The pain in my gut rose, called out for attention as I walked aimlessly through the crowded streets searching for the subway.

The tunnels dripped the sweat of thousands of burnt out lives. The air was a damp shroud. People yelled, knocking into each other in the suffocating bowels.

Dazed, I stared lost, at a little girl, quiet in the stroller, as her mother brushed the damp hair out of her moist eyes trying to balance herself as the train rocked back and forth. The rails screeched to halt. I got out. I had no idea where I was.

She isn't home. I try to call. Nothing. I want to break something. My head aches. I wait and I wait. It's late. She's not coming. I push the fears away. It's him. I sweat in the darkness. It's okay.The sirens wail. The dogs howl below. Let it go. It's not what you think. Fuck. It's a full moon out. I have to get out of here. I have nowhere to go.

The phone rings. I hear some guy laughing in the background say her name. The tension snaps. I'll break something. I'll fucking break this...

I Am

Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York

I am a loser.
I have a job.
I've accomplished nothing with my life.
I am a good person.
I've done nothing of note.
I am a good friend.
I have no money.
I keep my things nice.
I am not fashionable.
I eat well.
I have no property or valuable things.
I have nice teeth.
I whine.
I listen.
I have no innate talents.
I am sincere.
I am not really good at anything.
I have a good sense of humor.
I am boring.
I care about animals.
I am not dependable.
I am dependable.
I am crazy.
I am sane.
I am confused.
I see clearly.
I am troubled.
I have a good sense of humor.
I am depressive.
I like to have fun.
I am a downer.
I am amazing.
I am jealous.
I am trustworthy.
I am a monster.
I am a saint.
I am insecure.
I am cocksure.
I have nothing to offer.
I care.
I am mutilated.
I am handsome.
I am lost.
I am righteous.
I am negative.
I am devout.
I am aggressive.
I am passive.
I am lazy.
I am driven.
I lie.
I tell the truth.

Love

There's A Lot To Be Said For Staying In One Place And Building Something

Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York

A guy at work last night said that Austin was full of whiners. I laughed and told him that New York was full of insincerity, that the default attitude here seems to be guarded defense and condescension, whereas the default attitude toward people, in Austin, seems to me to be openness and curiosity. Call that whiny if you want. "Doesn't that make you sad?" he asked. "Like a dagger to my fucking heart man." He laughed at this.

The night and people wore on in secure drunken obliviousness as girls preened with feigned indifference as guys posed with pompous attitude. Insincere stances attracting insincere advances.

A young actress with a stern and serious face came in looking like a normal girl, meeting up with a tall and austere, self important man with a cold stare who looked like he sold peoples lives for a living.

After midnight I retreated into my mind.

Around 1am someone called me over to a crowd that had gathered by the bathrooms where a tall man in his early forties with a shaved head leaned into a dazed and frightened looking woman berating her. "What would you think if I went into a bathroom with a woman and locked the door? Huh!" he demanded. He gripped his hands behind his back restraining himself as he leaned further into her. She had no response as people stared and the man restated his question louder, lost in his rage, the woman lost in fear as I put my hand on the man's shoulder. "It's time to leave..."

2 o' clock in the morning. I hid in the shadows thinking of Marie at the Waterfall house Upstate, wondering if we would re-engage in the peaceful environment if I were there, or if our problems were manifestations of thought, our dance, that would follow us wherever we went. I thought about running, leaving, knowing it wouldn't change a thing. I thought of Austin, New Orleans, New York, wondering to what extent environment has an effect on our behavior. Just then I got a text from a friend in Austin who moved from New York City, "You're just homesick," it said, "not romanticizing - Austin and environs are romantic. New York can be cold. You just wanna home somewhere."

I woke this afternoon to the cool breeze of the air conditioner. I looked at my phone, 'missed call Upstate,' it read. I felt a sense of relief as I lay, cool and comfortable in bed and called Upstate. It was hard to hear her on the phone. She felt far away, the other side of the world. Her mind sounded unsettled and her voice slightly severe as we searched for each other through private fears. I pictured the large house surrounded by woods and the waterfall in the background. She said I sounded good... better, I think she meant. I can make this work, I thought as she talked about a book of mine she took with her and change. "It's a good time to change," she said.

She didn't say, I love you, in response before the line went dead, but she rarely does on the phone. I got up and put coffee on then checked my inbox, a line catching my attention in a an email sent from the author of the book that Marie had talked about - "There's a lot to be said for staying in one place and building something." http://therumpus.net/

Love

Lover's Discourse

Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York

I wake with a burning headache. The bed feels like it's on fire. I can't move. I have to buy an A/C unit today, I think as I lay in the sweltering heat. I can't sleep like this anymore.

I shuffle through the blanketing heat of the apartment, sweating in my boxers. I feel a longing in an indefinable part of me. The apartment feels empty. Marie is gone for the weekend. Maybe it's for the best, I think. Something is amiss between us. Maybe it's me. Maybe it's us. Maybe it's not important what it is, but that it's happening.

I check my email, the fans twisting like satellites searching for a far away signal. I scan for her name in the inbox. I think of emailing her. She won't call me, I think. I'm not calling her either. I have nothing to say. Heat and light pulse through the windows. I follow a link to an article, reading the line, "...the lover’s discourse is today of an extreme solitude.” It sears me. I feel us drifting away from each other unsure of the direction we're heading.

I throw on some clothes, put my sunglasses on, walk out the door and descend into the all encompassing heat in a daze as I hit the street. Cars honk as I weave down the littered sidewalk. Music blasts from shop windows and kids shriek as the traffic from the BQE blasts its discontent from the overpass up ahead. I stop in the new corner cafe for a coffee at the foot of the bridge. The place feels stale and uninviting. I walk to Broadway with my iced coffee trying to wake, looking for a store that sells A/C's. The elevated train SCREECHES overhead. A group of young toughs on the corner make aggressive movements relating a story, pointing their cigarettes for emphasis. Young girls talk loudly into their phones. Street vendors haggle with customers. Someone screams out of their car window as they round the corner and the coffee moves violently through me. A bus stops in front of me as I try to cross the street blowing a noxious cloud of fumes, enveloping me as I realize that I've left my wallet back in the apartment. I turn around suddenly thinking of Marie as the surroundings dissipate into a silent scream. Something somewhere lost inside of me feels like crying, but nothing comes. The sadness is silent, unseen, yet as present as the air around me. The emotion takes too much physical energy to form as I shield myself from my surroundings. The sun beats down and I feel like I'm losing her, us, as I walk back to the apartment the demons of doubt tearing at me from the inside, feasting on the black pain under the glaring sun as sweat trickles down my forehead.

Love.

I Can Smell It

Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York

She leaves for the day to the beach. I'm sure that it's not against me, but it feels like it is when she goes. We fought last night. I felt stretched beyond my means, stressed out by unseen enemies and lack of sleep. I was ugly. I was mean.

The day feels like a facsimile of a life I'm supposed to be living. I don't know what's wrong with me. I feel detached from the world, constantly defending myself from an ever encroaching enemy. The apartment is not my home. My clothes are not my own. This isn't the building where I live. I look in the mirror and see an impersonator living in my skin.

It feels silent out, yet the sounds are attacking. There are no clouds but it's gray and rains. The air is too thick to breathe.

I don't say a word to anyone all afternoon. A city full of millions of people and I feel like a stranger.

Before class: The girl from Italy - her light is fading. She just moved here. "New York is not what I think. The blacks are racist where I live here. I think everything is going to be shiny here. But everything ees broken." The young guy next to her who's just come from a year of traveling chimes in, "It's segregated here. It thinks it's not, but it is. The city is schizophrenic. It's fractured living here." The sallow deadpan girl who's lived here all her life tries to defend. I tell her not to kid herself. "This city's a shithole," I say. "There's no gates on the bridges keeping you here," she says, "You can leave anytime."

Something inside me feels stale. Something no longer gives a fuck.

Marie's made food when I come home. I apologize for the way I've been acting and tell her that I love her. She smiles and starts the movie. "You," she says, "You are a handful." I think to myself that the same could be said about her as the fan twists back and forth searching for us in vain from across the room.

She hits me afterward on the couch, joking, one time too many for me to laugh anymore. A sick tension creeps into me from her stare. I tell her if she has a problem to say something and quit fucking with me. She gets up, telling me that I can rot in it. I tell her she's the one rotting, I can smell it.

Love

Money

Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York

I wake up dead after six hours of fitful sleep in the sticky heat. I'm faded before the day even breaks. Insecurities lurk in the fatigue of the body and the shadows of thought. Marie says she's working in the building where I'm going for an audition - $500 for my self respect if get the part. "Come to work with me afterward. We need the help today. We'll be done early." I agree. I need the money. I skipped out on work the other night. I've been feeling behind ever since.

I feel torn in too many directions as we leave our apartment into the blinding heat. I'm chasing too many things - work, money, dreams, a sense of ease with this fuckin' city - thinking to myself what do I need? as we walk through the waves of heat rising off the street.
"What's bothering you baby?" she wants to know glancing at me cursively, looking beat.
"Everything."
She looks straight ahead without saying anything, sweat beading on her forehead, her bags looking like they're dragging her into pavement.
Everything.
Everything's a trade off with money. I need money but I need meaning. I need money but I need my dignity. I need money but I need time for my writing. I need money but I need time for school. I need money but I feel drained from working for it. I need money but I need the space to think. I need money to ease the pain in my body that comes from making money. I need money but I need peace. I need something more than what the money gives me.
"Tell me baby," she says as we cross into the shade of a building.
"Nothing," I say, "It's fine. I'm just tired baby."
"Me too. I feel drained already," she says as the sweat gathers on her shirt and we're engulfed by the gaping mouth of the stairs leading into the subway and the city that supposedly has everything, but I've yet to see it.

Love

Wonderwall

Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York

I leave work, the ominous feeling building, at 2am engulfed in the darkness of Manhattan and nomads land, where the hotel resides. An unearthly light hangs dead above the skyline and the fetid stench of the black shadowy streets. I duck into the subway, a rat scurrying down a hole in the sidewalk beneath my feet.

I sit reading alone on the platform happy to have the time to myself tucked away beneath the city, the sounds of car horns making their way through the sewer grates. A far off rumble approaches and lights appear in the distance.

The train rattles, jerks then lurches to a halt as my bookmark falls to my feet in the fluorescent steel tube. The doors open to the 14th street Union Square station. The air is dank and stifling as I walk to catch the L train to Brooklyn. The stares of the people are deterring as I make my way to the lower level. I find a seat on the bench under a giant fan next to a passed out older Mexican man. A scraggly meth bent street performer sings and plays guitar to my left at the bottom of the stairs as an older black man at the end of the bench bangs his hand along to the rhythm of the song.

The song he's singing is foreign and familiar at the same time, working its way through my memory, pulling me from the lines in my book, "You should never apologize for being yourself.... People don't change. They try to but they can't. That's speaking from experience." "You're probably right. I'm not going to change." "I hope not." I close the book. I think of my past relationships. I think of Marie. I know this song - By now you should've realized what you got to do / I don't believe that anybody feels the way I do about you now / There are many things I'd like to say to you, but I don't know how / Because maybe, you're gonna be the one that saves me? / And after all, you're my wonderwall -

Love

Where I Live

Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York.

I wake sticky hot in the early afternoon to the sounds of construction next door, Rottweilers barking down below and Chinese workers squabbling as a Puerto Rican woman screams from her window for someone unknown. I take out my earplugs and remove my eye mask as the fan ripples the sheets. I rise, walking naked from the bedroom through the four room rail car apartment, past the windows, heading toward the bathroom at the other end, conscious of possible observers. I make coffee, put on some shorts and a t-shirt and climb the two flights of stairs to the rooftop to look out over the skyline of New York City and pray, quietly watching the planes searching for their way through the blue.

I descend the mustard colored hallway out into the street on my way to work carrying a bag of laundry passing on the stoop the old Puerto Rican matron of our building. "Buenos Dias," I say. "Hola mijo," she says nodding her head and smiling.

Puerto Rican kids on their way home from school cover the stained sidewalks yelling out. Strong smells assault as I walk: arepas, pizza, and Vietnamese food mixed with stale rain water from the night before. A gleaming car with mirrored windows cruises the narrow block, a repetitive synthetic beat rattling its trunk. The old Puerto Rican men in front of the corner store pay no attention. I walk into the din of the laundromat, the Spanish from the television rising above the drone of the machines. "Es caliente. Mucho trabajo," I say picking for words. "Si, si, Corey. si," the older Hispanic woman and her young son say in unison.

I walk to the end of the block past the tattoo parlor, the bike store and the funky hair salon, past the bar and yoga studio to the coffee shop where young hipsters in sunglasses sit smoking in the sun.

I exit the suffocating subway on my way home. It's dark, quiet and peaceful out. The store fronts have all closed their steel eyelids for the night. The neighborhood breathes. A slivered moon sits still above the rustling of the trees. The hipsters are gathering in front of the new Knitting Factory. Bicycles litter the pavement. I push past feeling as though my life may have passed me by as a faint dead smell rises from the street and a pale light rises in the distance from beyond my building.

Love

I Am Afraid

Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York

I am afraid.
All of my actions are based on fear.
I look in the mirror.
I am never pleased.
I am vain.
I am shallow.
I am weak.
I am afraid.
I am sick inside.
I am diseased.
I exercise to look good so that people will find me attractive.
My life bores me.
I think that if I look good my life will be better.
It never is.
I put something into my hair so that it doesnt disappear.
My self respect recedes.
I take pills so that my cock is hard.
I am not a man.
I use a cream for my eyes to keep the lines away.
The lines crack through my being.
I use cream to keep my face from falling apart.
My life is disintegrating.
I dont want to look strange.
I dont want to be strange.
But I am strange.
I am stranger than I understand.
But I understand that it comes from fear.
I understand that the fear is killing me.
Yet I feed It.
It feasts on my insecurities.
I am full of insecurities.
I live in New York City.
I am nobody.

Watching:

Love

I Think New York Is Killin' Me

Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York

I go to see an accupuncturist in Chinatown under the cover of gray and rain. Been feelin' down, beat. Look ashen.

My pulse and spirit are weak he says. "Something's draining you" - work, the City, the girl? Says my heart is undernourished. I think about the piercing pain in my heart that I often feel when staring off into space past the drunken crowds in the dim cavernous space at work. I find that place isolating.

Accupuncturist breaks my thoughts, saying I need to take care of myself. Says I'm not being fed spiritually or physically.

I'm goin' hungry. Eight million people in this City and I don't have a single friend, like Gil Scott Heron said.

The other day my therapist said I need a friend. I said I needa get outta this fuckin' rat race of chasin' a paycheck for bread and a roof over my head. I'm happy to have the job, don't get me wrong. But I need the money... Yet I need the relief from the strain that having an empty bank account puts on everything... But I need meaningful change. I've been running myself into the ground trying to make this writing thing happen when I'm off. Ironic though, isn't it, that when I'm off I need to be resting and taking care myself in order to do something that I don't really want to be doing - work - at the expense of something I'd really like to be doing... A snake eating its own tale. Life, juggling demands, necessities, obligations with desires, hopes and needs. I need to change. My life is stuck in a rut of unsatisfying work. My spirit is stagnant in a well despair. I cry out but no one seems to hear. And the needles pierce my skin as I lay on the table, my muscles twitching and spasming as I wonder if it's worth it, this life? Either way... I'll keep on going until my heart gives out or I find the change that I'm looking for... Either way... I've got more to say...

Life, I think it's fucking trying to fuckin' kill me, man...

Love

Livin'... L.I.V.I.N. Man....

Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York

I wake. It's early afternoon. It's sticky hot. I take off my eye mask and squint in the bright light. I take out my ear plugs. I hear the construction outside. My head aches from an uncertain origin. 'I should pay the rent' I think 'No. I don't feel like doing that today. I need to do the laundry today. That's enough.' I lay in the bright light as the fan ripples the sheets. I think about an email that I sent out yesterday feeling slightly nervous, thinking 'Maybe I shouldn't have sent that. No. It's cool. It's okay. It's the truth. Maybe it's too much though? It's weird. Whatever.' I get up and go into the other room. I open my underwear drawer pulling out my last pair of clean underwear, thinking, 'I need more underwear. I need to do laundry.' I go into the kitchen, put some coffee on, put the dishes away and do the ones I left in the sink from last night. I go into the other room to look for a new book to start reading on the subway to and from work. I choose NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND by Dostoevsky thinking 'Maybe I shouldn't pick something so literary. Every time I read something literary my writing becomes over literary and sounds corny. I have a corny literary style sometimes. Maybe I should read something "new". Oh well. I wanna read that.' I set the book next to the computer. I go into the kitchen and pour a cup of coffee, feeling anxious about checking my email thinking 'I wonder if that guy'll respond to my email? No. Maybe? He won't. Marie was right. I shouldn't have sent it. It was one too many. Oh well.' I pour my coffee with sugar and milk, pour a cup of orange juice. I drink the orange juice down in two gulps thinking 'Eating takes too much time.' The fan in the kitchen blows warm dead air. I look at it thinking 'We need to buy an A/C unit when Marie gets back next week. I miss Marie. No. It's nice to have my space today. No. It feels empty without her here. What do I do with my "space" anyway? Nothing. I love Marie.' I look at a checklist she made for herself before she left. I see the word tobacco. I take my coffee into the other room and check my email. There's five new messages. I think 'Maybe he did respond?' I check my messages as I sip my coffee thinking 'No. He didn't respond. Maybe he thinks I'm weird. I shouldn't have mentioned my drug use. Maybe he thinks I still use drugs. I don't. That's okay.' I delete three of the messages. I look at the other two. I think 'I'm weird. I've done some weird things in my life. Some weird things have happened to me. Yeah.' The construction blares outside. I turn up the music thinking 'I have to go to work tonight. I love this fucking album. My friend was right about this album. I miss having him in my life. I wish he were still alive.' I turn up the song louder as tears fill my eyes thinking 'I don't know why I'm crying, but this music makes me sad.' I frown then smile thinking 'It'll be alright' as I turn the music up a little louder.

Love

Addicted to this fucking album:

Not Drinkin'

Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York

We quit drinking eight months ago, Marie and I. I was ready to leave. I'd had enough. She felt judged. I said it just made me sad to see her that way - wasted. I was tired of feeling anxious, hungover, sick. On top of adjusting to living with each other, money problems, insecurities, doubts, fears, etc... drinking just made the relationship too difficult. I said I just didn't think I could do it anymore with her if we stayed on drinking the way we were. We'd already tried the monitoring and fazing it out trial that didn't work. So I felt I was left with two choices: accept or go. I didn't feel that I could accept. Things just felt too crazy. The drinking was just too ugly at times, always leaving chaos in its wake. She saw that I was serious and her resistance snapped. She said she'd give it a trial run - three months - and see how it went.

And that's been that.

Once she gets her mind set on something its almost impossible to knock her off course.

To say that our relationship has been better is an understatement. To say that's it's been all roses would be a lie. It's been an ongoing adjustment, a work in progress, as opposed to what it had become - stagnant.

Not drinking started off a little rocky as it was almost like we were getting to know each other all over again. But immediately she was less irritable and I was more at ease with things. There were anxieties about how to live without it, like - what do you actually do when you're not drinking? Drinking was the end, the reward for making it through each day. Then what? A lot of staying in. Movies. Ice cream. Exercise. Then Paris where we had a lot of long walks and talks, a lot of questioning about what's important. We began to sort it out - school for both of us. Change. Grow together. Write. Something happened in Paris. We settled into each other. We found simple enjoyment and trust in each other. I'm much more at ease with the relationship. I don't fear what chaotic scene is lurking on the horizon. She's lost her sense of hovering dread. The infidelity issue has become almost nil. Our fights are less frequent and less intense. It's just harder to be careless when you're clearheaded, and a lot easier to talk about what's really going on.

Sometimes I miss it, drinking. Most of the time I don't even notice that it's not around. I spend more time reading and writing. I exercise. I've got a good job. I share my life with someone I love. I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything but unnecessary drama.

I hope we stay on this road.

Love

Special

Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York

I met Lukas Haas tonight at work. I recognized him walking through the lobby. I thought it was him, but wasn't sure. He came over and asked me a question. I asked him if he was Lukas Haas. Yeah, he said. I asked him if he was still in the band BUNNY with Vincent Gallo. He said they hadn't played together in a while, that he wasn't in the band anymore and that he hadn't talked to Vincent Gallo in a bit. I ran out of things to say. I wanted to ask him if Vincent Gallo was really as much of an asshole as his reputation suggests, but figured it was an inappropriate question. A guy I used to work with in Austin said he had a run in with Vincent Gallo at SXSW around the time BUFFALO 66 came out. Turned out that I later had run in with the guy I used to work with, so... Lukas asked me about the hotel. As I talked I kept feeling like there was something I wanted to ask him, or that there was something that I'd forgotten to say, but I wasn't sure what it was. After he left I thought that maybe the reason that everyone comes to NYC is to get the contact high of being in close proximity to fame, glamor and success. Then I thought about a friend of mine who used to live in Brooklyn who had a friend that lived in Vincent Gallo's building who said that he heard Vincent saying all the time - I wrote, directed in starred in that fucking movie! My friend thought it was funny. I thought if I'd written, directed in starred in that movie I'd tell everyone too. Then I started thinking that I'd really like to meet some writers, as I'd have more to talk about, but they're harder to spot in crowds than actors. Coming home on the train I remembered that I'd seen Lukas Haas with Laura Dern in Austin backstage at a Ben Harper show. Then I remembered that a friend of mine who's friends with Lukas's mother said that he had a small production company in Austin and that she thought he might be interested in my first book (that I've now folded into the one I'm working on). I just couldn't put it all together when I was talking to him.

Love

Listenin' to:

Escape

Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York

We escaped for the weekend to Montauk.

After working til 4 in the morning on Saturday night I went home and woke Marie, we took the early morning train from Penn Station to points east under the bright blue sky.

Me, in a sleep deprived, worn out trance as we checked into the seaside motel.

Dropped our bags, went for breakfast at a greasy spoon in town, then set up on the sandy beach, lay there all afternoon letting the sun and the sound of the surf drive out the thoughts of work.

Through over-sized green shades Marie watched couples pass on the beach looking like perfect reflections of each other.turned away from the horizon wanting to know if we were an odd couple with my tattoos, her bonnet and unshaven legs. "Yes we are baby. But it works."

"It does somehow, doesn't it?"

Later we went to dinner, talked, catching up on the week, Marie telling me that I still looked sick, like an apparition as she put her hand to my cheek. "How do you feel?" she asked.

"Better." I said.

The next day I sat on the faded wooden deck of the motel near the pool looking out over the ocean editing my manuscript for the hundredth time as Marie lay on the beach in the sun next to the umbrella reading.

Hopeful about the manuscript, I went down to talk to Marie. She questioned me about some of the passages. I got defensive, angry. She wilted at my protests. It would take too much time to correct. A month or more. I was upset, not at Marie, but at the process, the time, the struggle. Not moments before, on the deck I'd felt the strange sensation of having my past manifest itself through my words transcending the original event in my description. Elation. I felt close to the end. I was disappointed to know that I wasn't there yet.

"We'll get there," she said.

We stayed an extra night falling asleep to the television, rising at 4:45 in the morning to catch the 5:30am train to get Marie to work on time.

Landed frozen and disoriented in Penn Station as the chaotic morning rush swarmed around us with the sound of the waves still crashing in our heads.

She kissed me and left.

'We'll get there,' I told myself as she disappeared into the crowd.

Love

Reading book I found on subway platform: