Where are my blueberries?
A hot breeze lollygags down Canal. Its arms and legs are cigarette smoke. Its mostly unbuttoned, lightly wrinkled shirt is water and bourbon. Its face is the unfortunate mug of the mouth of the Mississippi. Its hair though. Its hair is gardenia and sweat and allure, disarming, hurtful, and turned the corner before you looked up.
Good question, son.
His laugh is so secure. I want to trust him. I want to take him to my kitchen. To feed him and watch him make faces at the newspaper.
He’s never coming home.
A door of red-painted wood and cloudy glass flashes open. The brass handle smacks against the brick. The ghost of a mean old lady floods the space in front of you. You walk into her. She runs her long, bony fingers down your arm. She smells like nothing. You know she wore yellow often but was never happy. She drank.
Canal Street — New Orleans
No one knows. No one knows. No one knows it was me.
Every few steps, Canal Street assails you. It’s clamoring for more of you, for less. The discord is unbearable. But it is yours. And theirs. Can you even stand it? Can you share it? Can you ever have it? Its smoke arms grab at you. Its jazz lips call out your name. Are you more? You doubt it. So far, you know you don’t know.
I forgot to lock the door.
Everything will be fine because what else would it be? Your guts are ravaged, you think. Your spleen is in the gutter. Your esophagus is everyone’s now. It’s no secret. You love it. You couldn’t be anyone else, any other way. You can taste the salt of your exertion, the same as your surrender. The morning is over.
The balances are off. I left the lights on and that will only make it worse.
The din cannot be differentiated. It has all melted together. It is a dirge and a Doo Wop and a sneeze. It is yours. You belong to the clash and the romance and the forgottens you just stepped in. Your shoes are not your shoes. Are they hers? The heat rises off the brick.
I’ll never go back. Every day I’ll never go back and now I’m just late.
It is also tomorrow. The bells are farther away now and you are fatter. Her earring throws the light through a window. You watch it shatter. The light. You want to laugh. But that didn’t happen.
It’s ok, sugar.
You want to say thank you but you just keep moving. You’re late but it’s already done.