i like subtitl...

i like subtitles and footnotes. i spend my time between classes gazing through a window in my bedroom. i can see the snow fall, rain fall, my reflection. i follow the path of an aeroplane towing a red lettered banner until it disappears behind a building, above the clouds. my head rests on a ledge full of dust. a ledge full of time. when there is no snow, rain, nor reflection of an aeroplane - i fill time with naps, ones that last till the clouds fall to the ground. this is to say, i want to awake in another time zone. i want someone to tell me something brutally honest.

on t...

on the exterior of my bedroom door there are thirty six polaroid photographs of people i don't know, but see everyday. each of their faces tell a familiar story different only in degree, and not in kind. looking at the door in the morning makes me feel uneasy, it is an eyesore. when i am sad, i open a shoe box poorly hidden beneath my bed. remove the half torn pack of belmont milds and i count the twenty dollar bills i've been saving. saving for when the eyesores are out of sight. saving for when existence, is no longer a chore .

we went t...

we went to look at apartments today. one had a balcony that overlooked a dumpster which doubled as a fire escape, another had hallways that reminded you of a steve mcqueen prison movie, and the last, had windows that looked onto brick walls reassembling some sort of internment camp. a tenant told me the government used the building as a fallout shelter for civil servants during the cold war. he proceeded to point to a door leading into the ground in the middle of parking lot. in the past week, time was spent in an office of foreign objects where a man used his softest voice. One floor up, another had an office with windows that might very will see everything. the same man used the word existential while adjusting his lime green cravat. his tie was the same colour i used to shade in damascus. he grinned when i answered his questions, i did not appreciate that. but he did give me a a list of names that may prove to be more useful than the apartment designed to survive a nuclear winter. that, i did appreciate.

the la...

the last time he touched a piano he fell apart halfway through the third line of a waltz. his hands started moving faster, the key signatures were inverted, and he'd stopped counting long ago were among the common public excuses. he lost something in that rest. the first, and perhaps only teacher he ever had gave him a pen. stories have to end sometime.after the audience left; he took himself apart, and curled his disproportionately thin body on the piano bench. this is why he doesn't touch pianos anymore. try to remember the postcards that were lost in the mail. this season is melting away and i've tried desperately to assemble something with the piano pen. it's a symphony, and it's disappearing like a vacuum through my fingers. this has always been a fistful of sand.

afte...

after dinner my father does not push in his chair. this lack of action does nothing to me, besides provide a distraction to the naked trees and snow outside. visiting a house that i spent so little time in reminded me of the great grandmother i barely knew. my only sibling was married this summer. though we live in the same city, we continue to reside on opposite sides of the canal. i've consciously done math in my mind to remember their names. they're fading, and with growing distance they become more like photographs and less like portraits. by three a.m. i cannot count the footsteps they've taken, the tears freeze when they touch air at this time of year. sometime ago i unknowingly became a passenger. and now, i have lost all bearing because constellations in the city cease to exist.