There was that winter with Jackie, in the large apartment, two floors, everything cheap and flimsy, no closets, large kitchen with a grate in the ceiling.
From bed one of us could smell the breakfast the other was making.
The wind made its way through the walls.
I found myself alone in our bed at 3:30 am, often.
We never fought about this or anything else. We hadn't figured out how to.
This would lead to our finish.
She was never home, and I think, I may have a neediness, when I am not getting what is essential to me, will make the other put off giving it forever.

I let Gretchen into my life.
Jackie would have nothing to do with her.
Gretchen was crazy, and my friend, so I thought...
Gretchen was dying, and crazy, and ate nothing
but
diet raspberry ginger ale, and vodka.
I looked after her,
Jackie was never home, and Gretchen was alone and so easily spooked.
Her executive functions were fucked from months without food.
She was twenty-four and I was waiting for her to have a heart attack,
as I leaned over her
as she slept with every light ablaze,
in her room without a kitchen
in her single bed
and listened to her breath
and smelled the dry lilacs and dust rise from her.
In the apartment that had no kitchen the temperature was always eighty-five degrees.
I was waiting, as it snowed
listening to talk radio
from the dream machine
she borrowed from me.
Waiting for her to have a heart attack,
mired in the hope that Jackie to come home,
waiting and
waiting for her to have a heart attack,
because it seemed impossible that she could actually walk around.
She never spoke of it as a problem.
That she was bones
and would scream and try to cry,
hopeless
because she couldn't understand what was being said to her.
Gretchen fixated on one problem,
she couldn't make a baby for her boyfriend,
(who had been in California for half a year)
because certain functions of her body had been shut down for a while.
I thought it was going to be the only way
she would go to the hospital,
would be,
if she had a heart attack.
As we sat in her car and drank vodka,
before she would disappear for days,
She told me, “I make bad things happen.”
sometimes she brought them back for me as well.
Jackie was never home and it snowed, all the winter.

19:03 - Sunday, Apr. 28, 2002

16:44 - Friday, Sept. 20, 2019