An over ripe plum clamp between teeth shiny but old. Should I do this? The disappointment all over again, the hushed silence, from the gut, from an incomprehension. I’d sell it all off for a measure of comfort, a moment of absolute stillness. But it moves, jaws work forward and backward, it’s easy until the core, where it’s all gnashing and unforgiveness.

You’ve heard time and again, that you are a wonderful mother. And it’s obvious, the children adore you, they hound you, clamor around you for affection and attention.
But you are not only the mother of children. They are not the only thing you have given birth to and have nutured. I look at our life, at our house, the things we have seen, accumulated, and enjoyed. I look at the span of time, the stretch of years between now and the time your casual gait across a room changed our lives forever.
You gave birth to all of this, to us. You have cared for us and nutured us and tended to us with such care and grace. While I tore down walls only to put up new ones, you fed and cleaned the soul of this marriage, you tended to my wounds at the cost of yours.
Like any loving mother, you’ve put your children before everything else. You’ve made love the organizing principle of our lives. You’ve made us into a family that can withstand anything.

At some point I have to ask myself, is this life worth telling. Not living, mind you, of course it is worth living. But is it worth telling?
I had said to him, at the very least to leave behind a legacy for my children, a transcription of who their father was and how he viewed the world.
At the very least, is it worth telling?

With teeth, always the teeth, too sharp but brittle, or the fear of brittle, of peanut brittle stuck in the gums, burrowed beneath until enflamed, until we all pick it apart with dirty toothpicks made of syringes.

Beats me and beckons me, all the failures, all the sorrow, relived and drowned, resurfaced and effaced, ebb and flow, awash in jetsam and splendor

You know what I miss about Albany?
I miss living in a hip neigherborhood where I still thought everyone was an idiot but there was good food, friendly people and a park we could stroll in just two blocks away.
I miss being isolated and having an excuse for remaining that way. We dodged so much and spent time pursuing each other instead. I miss locking myself in that little den in the front of the house and writing like mad while going through 2 pots of coffee and an endless amount of ramen noodles.
I miss waking up and sitting on the stoop outside having a cigarette while reading literature and watching the world hustle by. I miss watching people trying to squeeze their cars into spots I knew and they knew they couldn’t possible fit.
I miss the smell of burnt coffee grounds in the early morning.
I miss taking long ridiculous walks to just grab a video or eat some chinese and talking about our future, our lives, our politics. I miss standing in that bathroom and watching you dry yourself after a shower.
I miss that, I miss the tenderness and the time we had to languish in it.
But I wouldn’t change a goddamn thing today either.

Fits of sadness looking staring music attached time, time is so fucking fleeting and the nostalgia always, always this beacon of light, the present a perpetual darkness or is my hindsight clearer than any other?

There are time I am utterly run amok, chasing something to its end, obsessed until I’ve had my full.
And then there are time like now, not ennui exactly, but no impetus, no desire, no drive.
Ebb and flow, jazz and lull.

This what I feel
The tremble in my fingers
The lack of spit in my mouth
The sweat glistening on my forehead
The beat my hearts skips
The seizing of my stomach
The stagger of your breath

Straddled always between rich and poor, intellectual and thug, faithful and faithless.
I remember reading about first generation immigrants and finding resonance with the term “liminal”: caught between the old and the new, the children of immigrants trying to mitigate the differences between their home and the country outside of it.
And I find myself in this perpetual state, oscillating between any two points. To rip from morrissey: “oscillate wildly”