Where the Once Broken, Now Mended, Find Me
Living in California for nine years altered me.
In New York, I’m red-lipped, floss-thin, and cynical. I identify as many things, but mostly I am parts incomplete. An abandoned home in a constant state of disrepair. I whitewash the childhood I never have until it becomes a distant memory and I write a book about it that I never read.
Forget roasting hot dogs in front of a church with the makeshift fire you built. Forget pumping the swings so high you feel as if you might dent the sky. Forget the day-old Bacardi, eight-ball eyes, and nails that rake skin because of the junky itch. Forget the thumping against the walls, the blood stains on the carpet, your clothes. Forget a hand parting those crystal beads, wading his way through the dark room to the smallness that is you.
I bleach all my history white until I feel some semblance of clean. Use the kind of bleach that burrows into the bone. Become so clean no one can find me.
In New York, I sleep to the end of the line. I wake in Coney Island, Ronkonkoma, Huntington, Riverdale, and 206th Street in the Bronx. I wear socks always. Even on the beach, especially on the beach, because there’s always the threat of glass cutting into your feet. Beach is blistering skin, sand in my eyes, and a boardwalk beneath teeming with…
