What broke within me yesterday evening was something already broken. I watch parts of myself become fractals, like snowflakes, intricately cracking, even when I think there's no where left to fissure.
This is how I take my life.
In small, jagged edges, breathing air so cold that it feels as if it has none of that life-sustaining grit we take for granted in the chemical structure of oxygen.
It snowed in Boston for the second time this year, and now, the snow is expected, welcomed, unlike that fluke day in October, when Jack-o-Lanterns weren't yet carved. I look out over the city, now, and I see whiteness (that over-used color for purity), and I'm not sure if it's the city to call home, or if the city claims me.
Or if I have nothing to claim (me).
From this window that I sit next to, I have a clear view of the six pillars of the Holocaust monument, next to the McDonald's (get your Big Mac and obligatory, required guilt in one convenient outing and title it a work of raised consciousness), and the pathway under those six million names is clear of snow, but empty of pedestrians. In fact, I've hardly seen tourists there, even at the height of tourist season, but the shopping plaza a half-block away is always a sardine can of people. This knowledge has always made me sad.
Over the past three weeks (longer, subconsciously, perhaps), I have become closer to another woman. The possibilities and potential are great this time, and yet, it's those very hope-full sentiments that turn me inward and secretive, guarded. Reverse psychology. Protection of self. Superstition. Call it what you will, fear's the most dominant compound in the mixture, followed closely by that crypt-like exhaustion that encroaches, daily, into more of my being.
The trick has always been to hold my breath while wishing, and to keep still and quiet about the most important places in my life. This trick, however, has never really worked: you can't turn held breath into anything but a headache.
I think I'll walk to the Holocaust monument at lunch, read some names, and breathe, because it's necessary and right that I should do both.