It
seems wrong.
He
follows me into the men's room
and
unzips next to me.
There is no one else here.
I
glare at the blue capillaries
in the
porcelain that
stands
like an open coffin
before
my boy's eyes.
Grand
Central Terminal
is a sullied patrician,
rank and seedy.
The
Yankees
fly in
airplanes now.
I
gargle "no" to a question
I
never really hear
and
run,
fear
transporting
me up the ramp,
past
the bookstall
that
sells The Evergreen Review,
to the
street.
I suck
in
the
air of survival.
I tell
no one.
I should not have been there.
It's on me.
II.
Automatic
weapons jut above backpacks;
fatigues
weave through suits
to the
waltz of Return to Normalcy.
I
don't think I've ever noticed
the
police desk outside the restrooms.
The
food court is waking up.
Curry
and pastry
tantalize
my stomach.
Clinks
and sizzling and spatulas
ring
in my sleepless ears.
I am
conflicted.
My
sphincter pulses.
I'm
scared.
Should
I file a report?
Should
I leave a picture?
Is
Carrick really missing
if
she's where she thinks
she
wants to be?
What
if they find a body
and
don't know to whom
it
belongs?
III.
as she
starts to withdraw,
Carrick
sweats on the downtown platform
as we
wait for the 5:58.
We
will meet Deirdre in front
of the
New York Public Library.
Four
years have passed.
We are
intact.
Carrick
hands me her iPod
to
listen to "All of Me"
performed
by a throwback band
she
has befriended in Central Park.
She is
sharing her music again.
A strap
on her bodice rips
as she
scratches her back,
and
she gives me that goofy look
that's
so endearing.
We buy
thread at Rite Aid
and a
needle to sew.
We
unconsciously set up shop
ten
yards from the police desk,
which
is just outside the rest rooms.
I am
not aware of soldiers.
I jab
at the strap
and
pull the thread through
the
fabric
in
jagged loops.
It
occurs to me
that
this space is sacred.
It
contains multitudes.
IV.
propound
on Walt Whitman's
autoerotic
tendencies.
Then two stentorian voices,
devoid
of New York,
make Leaves of Grass sound
like
drawing-room poetry.
We
laugh and chide
on the
bus ride to Deirdre's car.
I reflect on Whitman and
am reminded of our epitaphs,
or mine, at least:
If you want us again, look for us under your boot-soles,
and that's just fine and dandy.
No one
wants me to propound.
and a mansion
on North Broadway in Yonkers
where
she will let graffiti artists tag her stone walls
with
flowers.
We
have circumvented
the tracks of
the Lower Level
on our way uptown.