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.