I ate one-tenth of one gram of psilocybin and went to hear Eileen Myles read in the city and everyone in the room bled together the way we’re supposed to but the lights went up and we were pushed out of the womb like water breaking and I was standing again in the labyrinth. Earlier I’d tried to navigate by sky after I’d forgotten how to swallow when I realized I was eating canned prayers I’d thought – a nice meal before the poems the restaurant was next to the Y though, and a slow, quiet, parade of unhoused people zigzagged past. You cannot walk in a straight line when you have no home. The bartender got nervous when the music stopped poured heavy, smiled wide everyone inside was pearly white and well-fed on spring green asparagus the hallway to the bathroom wreaked. I looked outside, not directly at the man with skinny ankles or the woman with the swollen ones never in the eye too transactional and no one gets what they want but just over their heads the seagulls were fighting a band of crows and they won every time chased those bright black birds back behind some sky line then perched on the dumpster, laughing later, they wheeled, blue, in the aqua light of Camden National like alabaster sentries of wealth, they never sleep. How do all of these parts live next to each other? It must be the walls the bar, the book, the burning bush hospitality, the homeless, the lilac girls with ivory arms the apartment across the alley where someone lives a whole charmed life their potted plant a prisoner slouched against the window I thought was a mirror when I walked by. Just six inches of soil around each tree in each cobbled courtyard the earth is beneath the concrete the earth is beneath the concrete the earth beneath the concrete heaves the roots need our logic cracks I sat in my car and forgot to breath for five minutes before groping my way home and when I made it I received a two hundred dollar parking fine saying “overstayed” “please come back”.
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