Me and Sarah IN THE CAFETERIA

I picture eight year old you and eight year old me sitting across from each other at the lunch table.

“I’m going to have an eating disorder when I turn sixteen,” you say to me

“Interesting, my anxiety is going to kick in nine short months after.”

“Why even grow up then?”

“Well because this sucks too.”

“Does it? Look, my mom packed me this whole lunch, with a juice box and everything. This isn’t so bad.”

“Yeah, but we’re second class citizens. We can’t even vote. Do you know who George Bush is?”

“Yeah but think about having to pay taxes. Or utility bills. Or deciphering texts from asshole guys who don’t know what they want and couldn’t articulate it if they did.”

“Can I have some of your sandwich?”

“No.”

“Can we go halves?”

“No, I don’t want whatever you’re eating. I don’t like how it smells.”



“What happens after we die, do you think?”

“I don’t know. I think heaven is just piles of puppies. And you pick whichever one you want, and it’s yours.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad.”

“You can have one bite.”

“Okay.”

“Why do you think it hurts so bad?”

“What?”

“This. What happens to us.”

“I don’t know. I mean, I didn’t ask to be born and I’m afraid to die.”

“Notwithstanding.”

“How do you know that word?”

“I’m just scared I won’t be ready.”

“To die? No one is.”

“To grow up.”

“Oh.”



“Is that chocolate milk?”

“Yeah.”

“Can I have some?”

“Yeah.”

“You think anyone will love me?”

“Statistically speaking?”

“Do you love me?”

“I’m eight.”

“Yeah but could you?”

“I think so.”

“Okay.”

BOYS DON’T CRY

The bed I grew up sleeping in is barely big enough to fit my thoughts 
let alone two people 
and while I'm still adjusting to sleeping alone 
I've really only ever been alone here.

So my body returns to a moment in time 
the way bodies know to do
when I was clumsy and unsure of myself 
staying up until the sun came up 
giving anything for a bed in any borough big enough 
to contain the dreams that spilled out the top of my head when I lay down to sleep. 

Having someone like you to dream beside
you
whose dreams I could maybe write for but would prolly never appear in
is something my teenage body couldn’t even fathom.

But I’m grown now. 

It just doesn’t feel like it when I’m back in the cul-de-sac 
screaming into the phone at my ex-girl 
sounding like Mario 
sounding like how-could-you-how-could-you-just-forget-about-me 
except I don’t sound like Mario
I sound like a fucking lunatic
and my dad yells from the front porch 
telling me come inside 
the whole god damn block can hear me 
but “here kitty kitty” doesn't work on young Simba
I'll come when I'm ready 
and fuck these neighbors what do they know about me 
looking down at me from their second floor windows
and I can't even look up 
with this crown lying so heavy on my head 
they’re calling me inside for supper 
but I got enough on my plate 
most young kings get their heads cut off 
and I’m not ready to die.

I came home to lick my wounds after she left 
and I got sick 
but my house is not a home anymore 
not when they got me sleeping in this fucking 
mausoleum 
that used to be my bedroom. 
I wanna make fun of whoever put this room together 
with this Porsche poster even though I pushed a Honda 
and this Bob Dylan poster even though I listened to Omarion 
but my heart breaks for that kid from half a lifetime ago 
trying to construct a persona from TV shows and hand-me-downs 
cause he wasn't strong like me 
he didn't know how to show love how to receive it 
how to talk to a girl 
other than to occasionally slip 
“I’ll let you be in my dream if I can be in yours” 
over AOL Instant Messenger 
to a girl from the neighborhood 
who didn't know it was a Dylan line 
and why should she 
we were just kids 
how were we supposed to know anything? 

I got my own lines now but everything else is the same.

I still have all my old Calvin and Hobbes cartoons under my bedside table
where they’ve sat for twenty years. 
We could crack one open and thumb through the pages 
until the nostalgia hits like edibles 
knocking us flat on our backs 
where we can look up at the stars 
you remember how they did in that famous strip?
I don't have a skylight or anything but 
we could probably get a pack of those 90’s glow-in-the-dark stars 
and tack em up on the ceiling. 
We can see the real stars from my bed 
I might mention 
but you wouldn’t fall for all that. 
I know my childhood twin mattress isn’t really your style 
and it's not mine either 
bet 
but maybe for a second 
we can pretend we never grew up 
maybe there 
looking out into infinity 
it’s like it never even happened 
and we can forget about how bad it's going to hurt. 

See I could shake the earth off its axis with this pain that I got 
but with you 
I want to spin it backwards 
rewind time 
start from scratch 
I want to show you where it hurts
here 
and here 
and there
and I want you to walk your fingers over my skin and say 
I’m here now 
whoever did that can’t find you here 
baby you’re with me 
and then I want you to take my hands 
smooth your thumbs across my palms and say 
I’m here now 
whatever trouble you made with these hands 
that’s out there
you’re in here
stay with me. 
I want to cry 
but I don’t 
because a king wouldn’t 
nah 
I want to walk tall for you 
throw my shoulders back 
beat my chest 
but what’s a king to a goddess anyway? 

Let my walls fall away 
let the roof lift off 
fly me to the moon like Frankie 
second star to the left and straight on til morning 
except you’re not Tinkerbell 
fuck that 
you’re Wonder Woman 
because in your arms there is no Neverland 
there is only here 
wherever it is that you take me 
and all I can do is hold on 
until we’re back in my bed again 
safe and sound under the covers 
dreaming about the boy I never stopped being and the girl who saved him 
but until then?

I’ll let you be in my dream if I can be in yours.

WAITING FOR MY SHIP TO COME

For a second, I thought I was in a brick townhouse in Hell’s Kitchen
My prototypical New York
Where the pigeons still chain smoke
And the cockroaches still double park
And the stray cats still jerk each other off for dope
My father is there, but his sunglasses aren’t clip on’s
My mother is there, but her hair is phosphorescent blue
My grandfather is there and his corgi is more famous than anyone living in Manhattan Plaza
 
But I am in Queens
Staring at a blinking cursor
Waiting for the words to come
 
I’m not saying I need to be in Hells Kitchen to be in New York
I’m saying I need to be in an apartment where a beat poet dropped dead in the kitchen
Or didn’t actually, but somebody else wrote a poem about it
Or somebody wrote a poem in general somewhere in the building
Or at the very least wrote a column about brunch on acid for Vice or something
Fuck, wrote a grocery list in cursive, I’m not picky
Wrought words on paper
 
But I am in Queens
Listening to the hammers of greed banging away on the new unit downstairs
Waiting for my ship to come

Let it be a motorboat
Something I can see out the front of while I steer it along the piers
You never know, there might be a bad bitch in a kayak
I might peep the titties but you know I wouldn’t leave a ring with her
I mean she’s kayaking in the Hudson
She probably lives in like Inwood or some shit
And doesn’t have ice cream in the freezer
I can’t get with that
 
Let it be a sailboat
I'm not in a hurry
A ferry, even
That's that off-brand Titanic
I’d ride a fucking dolphin to Hoboken and back
If when I arrived, you were waiting for me
With keys to a brownstone on the west side with a stoop like Arnold’s boarding house
Or wherever it was that Dino Spumoni lived
Or not Dino but the other guy, the one who wrote the words to the songs?

Let me be part of somebody's history
I don't care if it’s make believe
I'm nostalgic for a neighborhood that doesn't exist
And a childhood full of stickball and open fire hydrants that never happened
And the words I wish I wrote with my finger in wet concrete
That might still be there after I'm gone
Buried under Port Authority with a box of cannolis and a fresh pair of 1's
For the kid living in the apartment built on that sidewalk
Who will live in a city with damn near no heritage left
Who will catch the sun's reflection off the Hudson river in a peculiar way late one afternoon
And put his pen to the paper
And his feet in my footsteps

Until then, I am in Queens
Trying to be somebody
Waiting for you to come home