somewhere-a-woman

[somewhere-a-woman]

The first night, leftover patches of ice, a winter wool coat left open, sideways glances, you reached for my hand to make sure I didn’t fall because I had flats on, and you made fun of me for it.  I really didn’t know how to feel about you, thought you were going to leave me at the bar but asked me to come to dinner with you and your friend instead, there was Mediterranean food and red wine, you both flirted with the waitress but your eyes remained on me until we were left alone and you grabbed my face and kissed me in a way I knew everyone around us wouldn’t be able to look away from.  When we left the restaurant, it was different.  Contact was natural when I looped my arm though yours.  We strolled.  I never strolled in New York because I was always trying to get somewhere.  We walked by Night Hawk, a dine in movie theater I had never been to but lived down the street from and I said that to you, told you I had never been there.  “We will go sometime,” you said when we walked by.  And I knew then that it would end sooner rather than later because men do that, they make promises about the future in the first few days of being with you and then they break those promises.  But I tried not to think about it when we walked under the Williamsburg Bridge and you backed me against a fence that separated gravel from sidewalk.  You had your hands inside of my coat against my skin and I wondered what people though when they passed by us.  I see people like that now, pressed into each other sequestering off the light between them, how they can feel each other breathe, how they can taste toothpaste or bourbon or garlic or salt, the indifference of putting their intimacy on display.  I wonder how much we forget to remember or remember to forget.  Because now you’re just another man who left me a little breathless by the side of the road.

#journaling #female writers #writing

[somewhere-a-woman]

NY, NY

I will ride the subway to nowhere, sometimes just to see how far I can go, to see that there is no end to anything. I watch two people share headphones, heads resting together, the curves of their ears touching, an intimacy that they don’t even realize.

Some days  I take the train out to the very last stop on whatever line I am on.  Sometimes I will just ride and ride and ride to watch the people that step onto the subway cars, their forms of intimacy profound.  They shared headphones and turn pages of books for each other.  They feed each other pastries and lean into the empty spaces between their bodies to fill them.  I watch teenagers most, the way they hold on so tightly to each others’ sleeves, trying to navigate around everything they are feeling that is so new and so unfamiliar and so thrilling.

This is a city where you encounter love on  subway in the middle of the afternoon, at the edge of morning, at the plateau of twilight.

This is city where you are unafraid and terrified I’m the same blinking minute.

#writers #journaling #woman writers

[somewhere-a-woman]

[somewhere-a-woman]

This thing called grief shows up on a day where the weather is nearly perfect.  She tries to carve out space for clarity and quiet spaces, the sky is so blue it swallows everything around it.

#writers #women writers #journaling

[somewhere-a-woman]

[somewhere-a-woman]

[somewhere-a-woman]

💔

[somewhere-a-woman]

[somewhere-a-woman]

[somewhere-a-woman]

Behind all of these windowpanes there are stories and I’m out here just trying to create one of my own. 

[somewhere-a-woman]

[somewhere-a-woman]

[somewhere-a-woman]

[somewhere-a-woman]

Cross Streets

Somewhere a woman pauses, in the isle of the grocery store, pondering the shiny plastic dome cases of arugula, baby spinach, triple washed, organic, “Best By” dates stamped a week out on their labels.  She skims the isle of various hummus; garlic, chipotle, beet, black bean.  Amongst the mounds of ripe fruit and confetti colored vegetables she looks around her and forgets why is there.  She is not sure what she is looking for and the feeling is familiar.  She finds herself in the isles of grocery stores often, among the cool isles of yogurt and dairy products, inspecting cartons of eggs, wandering through the pastry section of Whole Foods just because of the smell of baking bread wafting through the air on Houston and Chrystie.  There is something calming about putting $10 chocolate bars and jars of condiments she will never use into a basket, there is something about filling her cupboards and refrigerators, wiped clean of condensation.  

It happens right after she has emptied herself out, the raw nerve of anxiety chewing at the base of her skull.  When she is in it, when she cannot pull herself out from the undertow of it, there is only the choice of enduring it until it is over.  The reprieve comes from knowing there is always another side, so she gets out of her apartment, peels herself of the floor where her wet face has left a mark on the wood floors.  She 

She’s noticed lately that there is always something she is trying to fix.  She moves pieces of her hair over her forehead with her fingers as she looks into the mirror, then smooths her hands over the back of her neck.  She wipes the dust from the vanity and the back of the toilette, grey blue film on her hands that maybe no one else can see.  She rearranges the bottles and vials of skin products that keeps her face smooth and glassy, makes sure that the labels all face forward.

This woman who takes exactly an hour to drink one glass of wine.  One glass of wine that wipes the reside away from her conscious, the way she writes that is clear and formidable.

This woman somewhere in the world with chalk drawings at her feet on sidewalks that no one else notices, a single paper mache flower stuck in a steam grate.  The fact that the flower was still there in the middle of SoHo seemed like a miracle to her, it makes her pause and wonder what it means in the grand scheme of things, the fact that she noticed it.  

These small details, these things she gives meaning to.

She calculates the time it takes from point a to point b by how many songs on a playlist she can listen to before she removes her Airpods. 

There are books she reads over and over again, pages dog-eared and paragraphs bracketed with a ball point pen.  Words do not come easy.  Writing someone’s inner monologue about a life you no longer lead is craft in and of itself.  

Somewhere a woman leads an inner life that no one sees.  Even those close to her who believe they know everything about her haven’t seen these parts.  When she feels the physical world slipping out from under her, she goes inside, she goes to these spaces she made for herself to feel safe and whole.  She remembers at a point during the pandemic where she sat on the titles bathroom floor of her parents house every morning and she would force herself to only think an hour ahead.  If she thought about the future in terms of anything larger than that, she was sure she’d lose herself.

Now, she finds herself back there, sitting for little increments during the day thinking only an hour at a table me.  What sid she need to pick up at the store, would she have takeout for dinner or would she cook?  Did her white button up shirt need ironed?  Did she have enough money to take an Uber home from work?  

Somewhere is writing this down not because she has a story to tell.  Women have the innate need to feel connected to another person in some way.  Writing for a an audience does that, writing for people you may never meet.

Somewhere a woman likes to wander the streets that way, right before the verge of sunrise, when a few lights begin to blink on, those people starting their days, stretching and scratching and coughing and pulling their clothes over their heads before finding boxes of cereal or a bagel to slice and spread butter onto.  Maybe they don’t eat at all.  Maybe they are late and are scrubbing their faces before tying their hair back or smoothing it down with water from the sink.  They are checking their phones for the weather or the emails or notifications they missed while they were asleep, their skin washed pale blue from the screen light.  Their eyes glow behind it.  Maybe they are waking up their kids, flicking on the lights to startle them awake with no choice of falling back asleep.  They are pulling up the shades, revealing an skyline or street corner, looking into someone else’s life through and apartment window.  

Maybe they are alone and rubbing lotion onto their legs and arms after a shower, towel wrapped around their torso while they wipe steam off of the bathroom mirror with their palm.  Maybe the coffee is made and sitting on the back of the toilette in a mug or maybe on the side of the sink.  Maybe they only brush their teeth after the mug is empty.  

Behind all of these windowpanes there are stories and I’m out here just trying to create one of my own.  As I run through the break of morning and more people emerge from the subway stops I try to take notice, the mother holding onto her son’s elbow, the teenagers shoving each other until one almost runs into a man in a suit, the determined looks of some of those who have cross shoulder bags or briefcases who look like they are talking to themselves until you notice their AirPods.  I take notice of the couple standing at the crosswalk kissing each other quickly before parting ways.  I notice who pulls away first and who looks back to see if the other is still watching them.  I run to the edge of the city and watch my breath come like the steam out of the tops of the buildings, billowing little clouds against a now bright sky.  The cold is sharp and cuts through my lungs but I like it that way, the cusp of morning, wishing I had someone to go back to, to keep me warm.  Instead, I keep running.

A crew of construction workers yelling to each other over the drivers leaning on their car horns, impatient, needing to get somewhere one minute faster.   There are insignias everywhere, little remnants of another life left behind or waiting to be reborn into another again.  The shopping cart left abandoned, full of bulging plastic bags, newspapers bound together by rubber bands, a glass beer bottle and and empty liter of whiskey left standing upright by the entrance of a building, undisturbed other than the peeling label.  shoes tied and thrown up to hang on telephone wires, dangling like wind chimes as they sway in the wake of a breeze that is something like a tide here in the city.  I am always looking for little signs painted onto the sides of buildings, inscribed into the brick.  

#female writers #journaling

[somewhere-a-woman]

[somewhere-a-woman]

[somewhere-a-woman]