the second time
going back home - thoughts, etc
This morning was the last day teaching poetry classes so I woke up at 9 and I walked to the nearest cafe even though it’s overpriced and not very good and I bought a large iced mocha latte for $8 and then I walked back home and it wasn’t sweet enough so I mixed in a spoonful of sugar like a 3 year old and then for some reason I couldn’t eat breakfast until I finished the coffee so I taught the class while taking big sips but I made the mistake of ordering a large and I still haven’t finished it and I’m hungry but I can’t eat breakfast until I finish it and I can feel it working on me - caffeine makes me shit and it gives me anxiety and it wakes me up but just barely - as I sit here and write and feel thirsty and tired and fucking starving. I go back to my hometown tomorrow.
The marketing for our classes has been shit, so classes lately have been me and L when she’s not busy and C when she hasn’t worked the night shift the day before and P, our only student. Today it was L and P. I like P, and I wish she had been here for a better year - she’s a really sweet girl and a pretty good poet. I’m scared she’s not getting enough out of this class. Today was our final day, which meant we did readings. P read the revision of a poem about her belief in God. It’s all just fine except for the second-to-last line, which is legitimately perfect. It feels wrong to reproduce it here, so I won’t. It’s an image and it’s got such a rhythm to it and reading that line makes me feel a deep and familiar ache, kind of a godless ache, though I’m not godless - I don’t think my religion even involves that possibility - an ache of abandonment, of coldness, of death and the color white. The rest of the poem, as I said, is pretty much fine. P has a very sweet voice and on Zoom she never shows her face.
I asked C to send me a poem of hers to read but she didn’t, probably because I texted her at 4 AM before the class started. So I chose one instead. Whenever I have to read one of C’s poems - this has happened before - I go with the one titled, “Start by eating a whole bag of apples. If you’re still hungry try this poem.” It’s (maybe?) my favorite poem of hers, a lot of perfect lines I won’t reproduce here, a bit of godless ache and a bit of the ache of having a god - two things I’m not familiar with, my religion leaves little room for belief. Or maybe I used to be familiar with it and I’m not anymore. Either way I like the violence of the poem - I like the repetition of the word fuck, and I like reading it out loud and giving it all its power and meaning. My roommate D loves the word fuck. When she’s talking with her friends in French you can hear it like a comma - fuck ass, fucked up, what the FUCK????
Anyway, class was pretty good, all things considered. I ended it with little ceremony and told P to stay in touch. L I don’t need to stay in touch with because we’re seeing each other in a month - fun!! Last night I went out with I, which was fun except for I’s habit of finding the ugliest man in the room and leaving you so she can spend a longggg time talking to him. I don’t like it but I do understand her (though that could never be me!). And it’s fine because she let us stay at roommate D’s party for longer than I would have wanted to in her position. D is so sweet and her friends are sweet too - the party started while I was making dinner and they were so nice about it, giving me shots while I cooked tofu on the stove.
Eventually me and I (I knowww that’s grammatically incorrect I didn’t want to say I and I tho) ended up in my room with Z, who’s been friends with D five years, and I drew flowers and anatomically correct hearts and little guys with angel wings on her hand + shoulder while she told us about the guy she’s friends with that she can’t tell if she’s into (she clearly is), and how D flirts with him even though she’s not into him, and how D was being a bitch to her the other day, and the whole thing’s just so much. I did not say anything to this except, yknow, listen to how you’re feeling, and, you’re definitely into that guy. I mostly just focused on tracing flowers and hearts and little guys with angel wings onto her palm. I was thinking about how, yeah, D flirts with guys she’s not into, and she has a crazy temper, but these are things you can understand about her after, like, a single hour hanging out with her. She also introduces me to her friends whenever they’re over, and the first time we went out together she said OK so what are your mental illnesses? Mine are - , and yesterday she cleaned the toilet in our gross and fuck ass apartment, something for which I will be grateful for the rest of my life.
It felt like the wrong time to tell Z, yknow, it’s actually really nice to bear people sometimes, so I didn’t say it. But lately I’ve been really into that sort of thing. I’ve been into watching my friends do something stupid and giggling because, like, I know you, and I chose this, and I knew exactly what I was getting into. Even with I, and that ugly man, and how on the walk home she let me blast Lucy Dacus and sing along while she complained about her situationship, another ugly man from another bar. He’s like my best friend, she said, and something about that was really funny to me because he’s in love with her and she’s stringing him along, making boundaries and then breaking them, ghosting him every other week. I didn’t laugh though. One time he told her, I feel like you could disappear at any moment, and she said Well yeah, I definitely could. She’s ghosting him again right now but she misses him. He’s like my best friend. What the fuck is love? Like, what is it? She tells me, He’s at a really weird time in his life.
I’ve finished my coffee but I still haven’t eaten - well God help me I guess! I’m fucking starving and I don’t wanna. All our other roommates are away so it’s just me and D and we’ve been living so nicely, she leaves her dirty dishes in the sink for too long sometimes but it’s fine because whenever she empties the dishwasher she puts my dishes in too. It’s so pretty here. Will probably miss it when I’m gone.