It’s April, the trees are new, they put them in overnight. Magnolia, cherry—they’re all decked out. Earlier, the woman on the radio told the host that when she stopped eating she leaned into the emptiness as if balloon. It was the only way to not feel stuck. Picture balloon and the even smaller woman now, ballooning smaller by the minute. The host was very friendly. She looks very healthy now. I’m late walking home from work. She said it felt like always taking a deep breath, expanding into the space between body and that other thing—light. And this is, yes, maybe what I’m after.

Down Baltimore Ave, sinking sun spilling slantwise on 48th street—think of this as a way to sink into your own body. Remember food poisoning from the sweet meat bun. How everything inside poured out. Incredible body. Other times forcing them out. A very real clean.

Picture bodies living inside your body. It’s kind of intimate. That’s what I’ll call it when I talk to you, later. I have to remember to tell you this is how I think about that week now. Louse on my head, louse on yours, lousy perennial gift. I’ll tell you that last spring this ballooning lightness was a way to be part of one body—sharing meals, cheap plastic wrappings once or twice a day, filling gaps with sex or not sex, with walking inefficiently, molding something soft with our
hips—a shifting center of gravity. The man on the stoop across the street from home is yelling FUCK YOU, CUNT FAGGOTS again. I salute him, fumble for the keys.

A heady floating. It is soft out now when dark, but the cat is hungry and already yelling out the open window. The woman on the radio said that sometimes the problem dissolves if you make food for other people. The cat doesn’t eat much, so probably this won’t serve me. She described her slow, impractical meals—fermented, yeasted, rolled into tiny spirals and cut quickly with floss. She doesn’t talk about this part of it, but picture the tedious and deliberate measuring, the cleaning up. Must take each ingredient out of the cupboard, measure, scrape off excess, return to cupboard, wipe the spills, stir. She described taking her sweet bread into bed with her in the morning for the second rise. This is also intimate and embarrassing, and I want to
tell you that I can’t stop thinking about it—her, in her crummy sheets.