i met grace at a party on friday night and we talked about injury and change. she was stabbed in june. i was dropped on concrete two years ago. the matts, my physical therapists, eventually had to tell me my hip would never be the same. i kept asking when it would get better.
i can't think in new york and it scares me.
when i was 16 my mom told me that if i had a car i would always be free. it costs $420 to keep it in manhattan. it would cost $450 if the parking lot guys didn't like me. i say hi vladko, hi zvonko. they run a tight ship, as men like that do. vladko has long eyelashes and resembles a cat: an inquisitive, graceful, bright-eyed face.
when i picked up my car yesterday, a blonde twentysomething and her mother passed me, the blonde in a hurry -- come on, mom -- and her mother trailing behind, calculating the cost of a day's parking for their maryland SUV. the blonde was so prideful, so happy to move at a different pace than her mother. eager, cocky, a bit disdainful in an offhand way -- a way i had myself at that age, and feel sorry for. i thought, of course you're in this neighborhood.
nobody in new york ever stops moving and it scares me.
i drove from the forest to brighton beach. it was frigid, the shore like a tundra. last summer i wrote a poem about standing in the ocean watching the sun set over coney island. called streaks, it was published in the car crash collective anthology in the fall. i read at the anthology launch in december, alongside richard hell and katherine faw, which was a huge honor. i stayed with kingsley and bunny because my apartment was still out on sublet. i was so excited to be back in new york. i felt unsteady, but i was rolling with it.
this time, i was back for good. i went to brighton first, before my apartment, before the house party, before seeing anyone or anything. i went because of streaks, because i wanted to take pictures of the sunset and post them with the poem to my instagram grid. i like how the photos turned out, but the sky is not pink in them like it was in the summer. like it is in the poem.
I always come here
when my life is changing
in ways I don't understand
i was trying to be excited. sometimes that works. cranking the wheel on the disposable camera sent a shot of pain through my ice-stung thumb. it was too cold to be on the beach but i was there anyway and i found a triangle of clear sea-glass. it slipped from my fingers on coney island avenue and shattered next to my tire. i stared at it and let it ripple through my body for a moment before unlocking the car.
i must make myself pliable, mind and body. i must adjust.
early 17th c., latin to french, in the senses harmonize discrepancies or assess loss or damages. to become familiar with a new situation. used in a sentence: [a] i can't adjust to living on my own. [b] the lifestyle is so very different -- it takes a while to adjust.
