23 Over 23

New York brings out the lonely girl in me.

And I wonder, with every anonymous man who makes a comment and disappears, what he’d say if he knew…

Knew it’s Blondie’s birthday tomorrow and she doesn’t know what to do.

Baby blue.

Because two sides tear her at times like this – that universal human hunger for acknowledgment. The hope to be seen. And that now instinctual drive to disappear.

Disappear into a city where one is at once seen and made invisible.

I don’t want them to talk to me. Don’t want to be ignored either. Want to be special. Seen for what I am and not this shell I become on the crowded City streets.

This reflection – all legs, back, shoulder strap is not at all the timid child I feel fidgeting around inside this steely frame.

Here’s something: All women walk with shoulders slumped when viewed from a certain angle.

It’s easier to be alone than left. Over and again.

I guess I could simply say I don’t part ways well.

And if I’ve got one thing going for me it’s a mother who never left. Her presence tempered always by a fear she might forever.

Here’s something: spiny armed pre-teens touch each other messily on the corner of 67^th and Columbus. They do this with artificial nonchalance, their movements meant to belie the shocks and sparks each second of skin affects.

I find myself thinking recently of how we’re all just animals and isn’t that so strange?

Two men carry their baby. Hold balloons and a bag from Zaabars. Look calm, clean. Connected. I wish I was that baby. Wish I could say I knew. What it feels like to be so held. So safe.

I am straddling two lives. The past and present. Waiting, I suppose, for the next stage to arrive.

I am always waiting.