Pete Yorn sings a version of New York City Serenade. I started to learn it in Texas, and found the lady who brings down walls. I drank whiskey and my fingers itched. The e string sweats and expands faster than the b.
And sometimes I would sit in the lawn and watch the oranges disappear like the sun.
I coughed up blood once or twice trying to recall a name. I can remember the letters, just not how to pronounce them. [cross-cutting in a dream sequence] The actress helped some with the vowels, but I would roll over in my sleep and elongate them.
Plastic bottles and crumbs and wrappers accumulate on long drives. Even those taken to the ocean.
And men develop rough hands and can stand firm anywhere, unless they are on the land. I wonder would I continue wobbling long should I find myself on solid footing again.
The signs on the highway show the distance we are driving away from Sendai. 193 km. We are driving towards distance, nothing else. 200 km. More.
The forests are disappearing like oranges, bundled in piles next to the rusted tin roofs that burn with salt and sun.
Someone is cutting down the trees, and I am tempted to snort in disgust. But I love to think what it might be like to sit with her near a fire, reading comfortable books in a comfortable voice until she falls asleep.
The less I look to the planets, the more I feel their gravity. And they reflect a scorching light that does not waver in the atmosphere.
Steadiness. It is a recurring thought today, along with conversations I should like to have back, we might summon a lawyer and renegotiate the past, have it notarized, and pretend to start again.
But if a lawyer knows things about love, they become cold. Quiet. Remote.
There is no soul in such revisions. What remains is a space between the necks of lovers, even as their faces are joined together.
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