All in all out all around all. Letters and paints and the ideas that haunt me until I finally drag a pen, far too heavy, to the page and get it out. Cough it out. Write like nobody's business.
Great hacking coughs of words. Acidic words as though they came straight from my stomach brought up by a bottle of wine too quickly swallowed. News and roads and traffic and jobs and sun and summer. Birds and maps. Laughing and staring into eyes, into water, into the future. Blowing smoke.
All the while, the curtains are closed. I'm not letting show anything that might hurt me later but that makes me hurt now. Reckless, reckless, reckless.
I'm just one girl in this city.
The only living boy in New York.
And the two words that come unsolicited, unwanted, unwelcomed but always there:
Apple Lung.
