Today I either want to be hurt or I want to be in love. I want emotion to sweep through me and lift me and tear and throw me down on the cement street to lie crumpled with my heart in my hands. For once it’s not raining. Forever this buries me, forever etching itself on my skin. It’s warm and quiet here, like a bath lit by candles at night. It’s not what I want. I want lightning and you taking my hands to dance. I think if I were to add your name to my list of phonenumbers, it would look like it had always been there. The ink would have just that tiniest smudge that says countless times a thumb has rested there. Give me a cruel wind today. Give me a letter the size of your fist. Give me the moment of rock crashing into water.
I’m waiting for Robin to arrive after school. Today is a day for the Boy. Teaching him culture and behaviour twice a week. I’m not worthy to be attempting to show such things to a developing mind. Usually I would take him to the poetry slam, but I haven’t been going the past couple of months. The room seems unwelcome somehow, with it’s crowded heat and whistling. I know I would enjoy my time, but there’s something grabbing my arm, keeping me back. It’s time to find a new thing again. My friend on stage, looking at me very carefully before launching into a love poem that wins him the evening. I don’t need that. Don’t you dare give me power. Don’t. You. Dare.
Starships should exist today. I should hear a rumble and look out my window to watch cloud white trail following a silver missile growling into the sky. I see now I ruined myself reading science fiction. I want my future and I suspect by the time it comes, I will be too old. Here’s looking at you kids, celebrate that you will know the moon as more than a mythology. I read recently that Buzz Aldrin decked someone that accused him of being part of a faked moonlanding conspiracy. He was weightless for the first time since the seventies just this week. What could that be like? Revisiting the future, the past. Every generation having a moment of “I know where I was when this happened”. Pity mine has to be the Towers. I want mine to be a colony. I want mine to be a shining spindle reflecting starlight. I want mine to be dirty and dangerous and strong.