October 21st 2016 at 7:14 PM

I'm at the bookstore again

Wandering through aisles absorbing titles

Not realizing I'm looking for the play you told me about

Talking to you is like having sex

Or how I imagine having sex

Talking to you is fulfilling a fantasy for me

Anne Frank's Diary is always On Sale

Why do they put actors on the cover of biographies

Henry Kissinger looks like Fred Armeson

I keep finding your face in other people but

I can't find the plays you recommended

October 16th 2016 at 12:41 AM

Dim lit walls that used to feel like a hug are closing in like a chokehold

Pealed Tiffany's skeleton suit off my body, these bones need to breathe

I told myself I would walk until I found a revelation

I will walk this earth until I have answers

If I don't find anything I will keep walking

Jules is sitting in a California diner

I lit my last cigarette on Broome and Mercer

Where Chinatown becomes SoHo

Littered with designer houses and riddled with graffiti

Next to a tattooed light fixture

There are pieces of me all over this city

My bedroom wall is on the sidewalk, scraps of thought and conversations in store windows, for sale and discarded

I shared my last cigarette with Chanel, she's been on my brain

I took my last drag on the corner of West Houston, facing the Angelika

New York City is funny because all of the glamour coexists with the grime

There is cardboard beside a stoop where someone is growing cabbage

Someone lives here, on the outside floor and up the stoop

I really am so lucky, with a roof, with a family

Only afflicted with an oral fixation and repressed depressive tendencies

Maybe there is another cigarette in my pocket

I'm thinking about throwing it in the trash in front of me

Growing out of this skin and into my trench coat

And getting too old to go out into the world for a smoke break

Let's call it what it is

A break

I turn around and head home, nicotine stink in my mouth

It lingers and dies in my lungs before I go for another piece of extra spearmint gum

I turn around and go home

Everything is different the second time around.

Photo taken by Maddy Sun

October 11th 2016 at 10:29 PM

Sometimes I get a glimpse back to the person I used to be

Sometimes I admire her

Angry, bold, unafraid of anyone's opinion and certain to get somewhere, anywhere

Certain of anything

I think I should get back into depeche mode, remind myself of my roots

I'm still flinching at 20 and falling in love with attention

I can't tell whether or not I'm fragile or perceptive

Overwhelmed by the people walking past on the street, sondering

What are their lives like, their children, their jobs, how are they sleeping

I walked past Andre Lyon Talle today

I sure hope he's okay.

Photo taken by Maddy Sun, Vanessa's 14th Street