11.21.2022

With my eyes closed, listening for the place inside. Every epiphany passing by. Warming up the vocal cords, this body, this life. How much can I give before it all gives? In a room of women, a woman tells me she dropped out of college three years in. Why I asked, unable to help my curiosity, although I had a suspicion. There was a very bad man there, she said. And what was the university to do about a bad man? So she left. I'm glad that worked out for you eventually, someone else offered. She shrugged again. It took me a long time to accept it, but I did. I liked the way she talked. When she walked in I looked at her face and I assumed that I could trust her. 

Every day here a woman tells me about a man. Lovers, requited and unrequited. Fathers, grandfathers, brothers, cousins, uncles, coaches, coworkers, strangers. Violent or just well-meaning. 

I think of Annie Ernaux, how she writes in The Years about how it looks as if a woman's revolution never actually happened. 

Did we think we were the lucky ones?

Shame isn't the point here. There's something else. Try turning inside and asking the question there. 

In the corner of my room I'm talking to my friend about abandonment. The word folds over itself, like an embrace. She's not listening to me. She is telling me about the man she's been seeing and what they might actually mean to each other, after all this time. I walk out the door finally. At the bus stop, I watch the birds follow each other in flocks, weaving between buildings and trees. 

It's true history repeats itself because time lives in one place that we've all been to. 

At the jazz club I have my head on a friend's shoulder. Their arm is around me. I ask them during a set, how can we listen to music and believe time is linear? How can we think there is one place to begin when there are so many entrances? Watch how the players listen to each other. Nobody knows where the music starts or ends, it just does and when you want to enter it, you just do.