prose

so i'm a writer.  i'm up late tonight and i've been writing a lot in the past couple of nights and then i just felt like i should post something here, at least once, at least by now.  so i have two prose pieces below.  the first, i think, is very appropriate for the theme of my summer and for this blog.  a representation of some of my more artistic thoughts in terms of shabar, or brokenness.  the second is a piece i wrote in san francisco; it is creative non-fiction.


#1
it’s nice to know the world is a broken place. pangea. once a solid form, once a whole, an entirety. once upon a time the world was a land instead of many. people traveled across it, instead of over oceans to its other pieces. but it bust. like a glass jar dropped— no like paper ripping— no like the sidewalk after years of growth beneath its surface, cold winters and hot summers expanding and contracting the concrete until it cracked. there was too much time for the world to take. the very earth splintered under the weight of itself, existing for so long, while everything grew upon it. years split the earth into pieces large and small. now we walk over bridges, we sit in planes over valleys, we ride on boats over seas.
indiscriminate time does the same to us. once solid forms, once sure, once whole, the years fall upon us like rain like sun like winter and summer and concrete. we bust. like broken pipes, like broken windows, like the strings of guitar pulled too taut too long until it snaps to two. like the spines of books bent back so many times the sewn parts wear to nothing, and our pages fall out. there is too much time for us to take. when we are born we are given a name and when we die we find we may have many names for the pieces remaining. different locations, destinations of our selves we have given for other people to travel to across our bridges, valleys, seas. we do not ask them to remember us for what we were on day one. but for the pleasant memories they received from the parts of us they came to dwell in.
we are broken places, like the earth. i think it’s nice to know it’s not just us.

#2

sometimes you don’t even meet a person you wish you knew their name. step one step two step three on the escalator coming off the train and i really want to know how to say the word that belongs to the face of the boy-man-human-person walking around with his bike on the stone like he owns the ground he travels. hand to the side as i slide up into the night with my best friend beside me– man on the stairs close to my left shoulder asking for money or something and i don’t want to say anything because it is dark i am cold and always afraid of my womanness in places i don’t know very well. he asks my friend is she from richmond because that’s what her sweatshirt says and even though he is mistaken we will not tell him because we fear our womanness and it is dark outside.

i hear the man with his bike say behind us below us as though his voice is above us, ‘she said no’. he said that for us. i want to know his word, like now i know his sound.

the man who asked says, ‘nah, she didn’t say nothing man.’ fading away because we have already walked one step two steps off of the escalator in the night dimly lit by street lamps and a blinking walk sign, flashing red, ten, nine, eight.

crossing the street i am so close to my friend, two blocks from the hotel, two feet on the ground of an earth that does not belong to me. i turn my head, and i see the man with his bike, paused. maybe he looked at me. maybe he wondered what was my word, my sound.

i wonder would i ever recognize his face, again? i wonder if i saw enough. i heard enough.

sometimes you don’t even need to meet a person. it’s enough just to know somewhere they still exist. one beat, two beats, three beats of a heart somewhere is sound enough. the word is alive.