Memories off Damen Ave

Off Pierce and Damen Avenue, today I couldn't tell you how now bound by sweat to this uneven and frigid floor it took a moment to remember the practice my limbs endured. To push myself for incidents like this. Shimmying down the stairs holding yesterday's coffee mug, was this really my home? I thought about that time we were lying upside down on the hammock trying to guess what stars looked like and it's so funny to sit outside past midnight and guess what stars are. One of those porch light talks. You said how wonderful and tragic it is that the light we see in the sky may be an illusion and that all stars are dead and neither of us really registered that concept because your leg was draped across my thigh and the body often overwhelms the mind. The body often overwhelms the mind. Life is a great big accident and here I am pestering over being remembered. I seemingly lit every candle in the basement and held the matches a little too long, tossed in an ashtray, fixated on a plate of molding toast on the bar beside that butterknife that can't quite cut and of all the things we hold against ourselves. My porch light was red and those barred windows looked much nicer from the inside. I didn't mind hosting meetings after Paul got evicted but how on earth do you do this at midnight when the brain is stuck in a loop? Extending something like family to people afraid of their own shadow, we were here because it was not a bar and we had nowhere else to go. Dressed up trickling down and filling this house that shook like a leaf every time the train ran overhead I hate these people and how they learned to be helpless,  I hate seeing myself in people waiting to confess every wrong. "There are all kinds of reasons we get caught up in anger". She announced this twice with no quick fixes and I was stuck in a corner. "You must enjoy life, what do you want to be remembered for". This was not a question but I don't blame Robin she's put in the work. She's got all kinds of connotations about what a good person is—a good country girl with pigtails and rimmed glasses.  I poured glasses of milk passed around as it was the only thing in the fridge. "Why do we celebrate theory but not roast pork?" This lanky bitter man speaking past the bourbon and brick-fisted belligerence streaking his nakedness along my rug provided everyone left their shoes on the doorstep. Some of us weren't so lucky. "Who cares about roast pork?" "Einstien loved roast pork, you stand here to tell me I'm worth my achievements. I robbed a man once who had an old dog, and when I tell people that being loved is not a reward can't we afford to be more than our work? Good intentions don't mean much anymore it takes all kinds". His bones danced inside and all of a sudden everyone was talking of new diets and new religions and I grasped for anything to keep me upright. "My son tells me everything that feels good is bad, I don't know what to tell him." A woman clutching her rosary reminded me of my own mother trying to find her voice beyond a book that had lessons of its own. I thought about all the windows a man has to climb out of, all the needles left on records about people who didn't know each other the night before. This room full of runaways so eager to be forgotten. "Selena's favorite television show was Moonlighting do you think they read something like that at her funeral, something so human". Who are these people that keep bodies alive, It was my turn. "I hope people remember I never wear sandals, I like corn better than flour and coke out of a bottle. I hope people remember wholly dirty socks and sweaty baseball caps of places I've never been. My grandmother's middle name is Leanna and do you ever lose someone over and over?" Met with something like seeing the same clouds for the first time we started to get somewhere. I decided that homesickness could be better than loneliness. “To know yourself in this way is to have time. To have time to remember the thought in passing to say y'know this may be important to someone. Of all the things I just want to be remembered for smiling. Are you loved like this?" Life is the smile and time has it's own work to do.