Dearest,

Time is a repeating circle; the ouroboros of digestion, consumption, revulsion, and inevitable waste. I’m sitting where I’ve always sat and where I’ll never sit again until I sit again. I am sitting on a bench on 5th avenue, abreast from central park, that mother magnet of space and air and grass in a box so confining time cannot move forwards or back; stuck.

There is a lake of leaves separating me from the pedestrians on the cobblestone. I can walk on water. I can hold eye contact. I can break glass with my teeth.

A yellow school bus filled with uniformed girls passes before me like a submarine, seventeen pairs of pigtail framed spies locate me and tell me I’m pretty before whooshing on towards war.

I am listening to Let’s Be Still by the Head and the Heart, feeling careless like adolescence, noticing time as it approaches me and asks to hold my hand. I am drinking heavenly and expensive coffee. I am smoking the ass of a joint I have been suckling on for hours. I am thrifty and thirsty and tipsy off one pint of Stella at Bedford Falls where I bashfully waved hello to a red-haired classmate I do not know the name of. I wonder if anyone knows my name anymore. I wonder if the world remembers who it birthed. I wonder if Time remembers who it took.

I am wearing my pea-green peacoat and feeling perfectly dressed for the weather. The breeze is cool, but the world is warm. It should not be this warm at this time of the year. The world is running out of time. But, everyone is smiling, including the dogs, including the trash, and no one pays any mind to Time perched next to me, squeezing my knuckles white.

I am perfectly on time with room to spare and the Avenue is wide to begin with. I’ve done something I’m proud of and something I regret and they are mutually exclusive. I’ve just now realized the earth is one big room. I whisper this revelation into the ears of Time who giggles.

Today was always going to be a good day because of the glint in my bodega man’s eyes and my unexpected patience. I think waking up early makes you wait less. Weightless–today for the first time in a very long time. I am not letting go of Time’s hand. I look at Time and I say “Please remain.”

Overtly,

ST.