Smoking

Last night I stood outside, leaning against the railing, a cigarette dangling from my lips. My head was cracking from the alcohol I drank earlier that afternoon. The sky-- electric blue. I swam through it until I caught sight of the Time Warner/AOL buildings. There they were-- seamlessly camouflaged into the sky, shining like polished wall paint. It reminded me of that spot in the old MoMA at the top of the escalator-- it was labeled as "art," but it was just a piece of polished wall. That always perplexed me.

I was far enough West to be in a residential neighborhood. The brick apartment houses stood stretching into the sky like bright orange sticks of coral. I squinted my eyes, trying to make them sway, as if in water. It didn't work, but a smattering of glowing yellow windows blinked back at me like enormous fish eyes.

My hands on my thighs, I stood there half hunched over, the breeze whipping my hair across my eyes. My hair was pin straight yesterday. And just then, I remembered how very black I had made it. My tongue was burning from the smoke.

Reaching into my pocket, I balanced my cigarette in the other hand, steadily reapplying my lipstick.

(Ne me quitte pas...)

In this light, my wrists looked white--ghostly white. I stared at them. "Lifting lakes on your wrists." Where did that come from? Isn't that a line from a Leonard Cohen song or something? "The pools you lift on your wrists..."

I thought of "Tanushka" from the Russian folk song that we just started looking at in choir. With her black hair and white skin, she leads the dance through the town. She flirts with all the boys. O-le-le-le-ley! I tried to feel like Tanushka, but I couldn't.

My lips were starting to feel dry again. I let the cigarette dangle there and pretended I was Brando...or Paul Newman.

The trailing tail lights on the traffic became swollen bubbles about to burst into liquid red. Blood running through the streets. Like all of this history I read... And tell...

I felt pale. Paler than usual because of my heightened awareness of the blackness of my hair; paler than usual because of the six layers of lipstick I had applied in the past half hour; paler than usual because I hadn't worn any eye makeup--not even mascara, and was sure my eyelids looked pink and swollen--something like a Bougereau.

(Ne me quitte pas...)

My tongue burned from the cigarettes.