Thomas Edison’s last words were ‘It’s very beautiful over there’. I don’t know where there is, but I believe it’s somewhere, and I hope it’s beautiful.
Even now, all possible feelings do not yet exist, there are still those that lie beyond our capacity and our imagination. From time to time, when a piece of music no one has ever written or a painting no one has ever painted, or something else impossible to predict, fathom or yet describe takes place, a new feeling enters the world. And then, for the millionth time in the history of feeling, the heart surges and absorbs the impact.
take my love in real small doses
Because we are neighbors only and bound by silent elevator rides with gentle smiles. Because we put our garbage down the same chute at the end of the hall with the buzzing lights and thumb the same apples for bruises at the same grocery store. Because I don’t know your name beyond Tenant of 4b, and sometimes I’ll get your junk mail in my box, and your phone ringing in the morning after you’ve left for work wakes me. Because I’ve never heard your voice, just the muffled end of a one-sided conversation with what I imagine to be a lover from far away, maybe across an ocean. Because I can smell your dinner cooking and it is not for me to have…
I can see your laundry hanging on the fire escape and I want the power of reverse sight; to see you without your clothes rather than your clothes without you. We sleep in identical apartments maybe with our headboards pressed against adjacent walls and your nighttime noises keep me up with the unmovable ache of our distant proximity.
