On my final evening, I put on all my clothes, over my hospital gown. Donned the kicks, grabbed my cane, and peeled outta there.

Derm bae would be in touch, she’d said earlier, when she pulled up to check in on me.

Looking too fly.

This maybe part of it. The sudden need to flee.

Autonomous bae seeing me was one thing.

But derm bae.

Derm bae was someone new. Someone to impress.

“First impressions are everything,” I reminded myself, pulling my gown down over my bare ass—I’d been lying on my side, siesta-ing—when she, knocking before entering, poked her head into my room.

I was closer to home than expected. Over on Powelton three blocks, a half mile up 41st.

Today two days after the year’s coldest.

Wind whipping. Stinging.

Cane clicking on the cobblestony sidewalk park-side there.

Sun just set.

Not telling anyone I was peeling out, so surprising roomie bae when I showed.

Once home, I texted N Come thru. To help me get sorted.

Caught him on his way back from his adjunct teaching gig.

While waiting for him, checked my email and saw that Sheila had emailed me back.

Asking Have you made it out to NYC in your van yet?

Lol.

Fuck dude, I’d really been talking that talk. Fractured hip, skin diseases and all.

But it was almost like Sheila could sense I’d just gotten out, how the timing went.

I read N her email, psyched.

I wish I could come up with a way to write that encouraged being in your body, she wrote. That’s the only trouble with writing: all the sitting.

And parents, siblings: you think they’re part of the landscape, like trees, or mountains. Then it turns out they’re people just like you who die.

Reading those parts over and over, limping-pacing, amped.

Yeah what about your body though, N said. Your room.

We went up there to see what was good, N telling me to take it easy up the stairs.

Seeing the state of it, he said OK, let’s get this sorted.

Helped me sweep up all the skin, the rolling papers, the random crap strewn everywhere.

Redid my sheets, me doing a tarot read for him while waiting for them to dry.

His present-future was nine of wands. I told him this was the Energy card. Fire card. That he was about to go in on his dissertation, his writing.

That it was time to work.

N was like Alright dude, that all sounds great. But howabout now we get that sleep-spot sorted.

3

GAL PAL

February 2019

Linked for drinks with some gal pals of autonomous bae’s at Fiume.

Pulled up early in the evening, at as brisk a clip as my hip allowed.

They’d commandeered the corner, bay window table one had to commandeer in order for this upstairs-of-Victorian saloon-spot to not feel claustrophobic.