2004-02-10 - 11:35 p.m.
Again I am subtracting three hours. I notice it’s 11 o’clock while I am washing our dishes from this morning and I imagine your plane touching down now (8 o’clock your time) in rainy Portland, where the air always smells of decaying leaves and cold mist. I told you that New York would feel like a different city while you were here. It didn’t so much. It just felt like my everyday life with you in it. It’s only now, after you are gone again that I am realizing the power of your being here to share my life with me for a few short days. It is now that the emotion of you being here, and then gone, that is building up in me, that I feel even more grateful for your presence in my life. I tried to imagine what it must have been like for you, to see my life through your eyes. I think about how quiet my life is, in the middle of this big city. It centers around food and friends and home and my roommate and my cat. While you were here I walked fast and tugged on your hand while we jaywalked, and told you to step back when the train is coming. I want to go back to the Hope and Anchor in Red Hook to sing Kareoke with Valita and Lane, but I know it’s weird because you won’t be there. I half expect to meet you still, waiting for me when I get out of class. I can’t hide the fact I envision us living in the same city, riding the subway together to our classes and jobs, holding hands and winking at each other on the train, just like all those mushy couples I can’t stand. In some ways I feel like I just blinked and you were gone, but I feel your presence lingering here, while I drink tea and eat cookies Lauren gives me.
