This piece was first published in Quarto’s 2020 Spring Print Edition.
Illustration by Gisela Levy
Instead, I’ll say maybe it’s enough: the watercolor Kermit on the wall, shot glasses filled with
gomphrena and statice, orchid and oatmeal box on the top shelf, the soft scratch of thumbing
through black dawn pages. Even the blankets and moisturizer mean something different now. I
forget to take out the compost most of the time, but nobody minds. I leave the teabag in so long it
dries up completely, stare blankly at New Jersey and the dog walkers until the orange dusk joins
me on the window seat, tripping over the sill with attempted grace. I can’t remember the last
time I tied my red shoelaces. I get by washing my bangs in the sink and playing songs with good
basslines so loud I have to skip class. Sometimes, I wonder if the mice are happy, or what’s the
best thing they’ve ever discovered. Cue fairytale doom. I’m afraid of the same things they are,
except cigarettes. I think about how I’d be a terrible knight. Someone smudges “i love u” onto
the other window, and I spend too much money on food. When I’m lucky, the bodega cat sits on
my feet. I don’t know how to say his name, his cheek an egg in my palm, so I call him “First
Night,” and he doesn’t mind that I have so little vocabulary to choose from. He’ll never know
body high, slapping hands on doubled playing cards, river mirror, the urge to sink beneath it.