✏️
The light fixture, modern,
brightens the old cracks in our ceiling.
Popcorn walls, chipped , lead paint.
Our sink spits out our upstairs neighbor’s breakfast. Sometimes eggs but usually pancake mix.
Their water drips down on us through those
same cracks while we shower.
We have beets in the fridge from
far too long ago.
The stains look like blood and we’re only 20
with a stained fridge.
I could clean up the beets and we could have new beets.
We feed their cat that visits us while we hang
our sheets to dry.
We have ugly pillows on a nice couch.
It used to be my moms.
We have a wood table with rings, drawings
and signatures from when we were 5 -
because we don’t have coasters yet.
Maybe we’ll make a home here -
but I go outside instead, because
things are better out here
and there are no cracks above me.
Sep 17, 2024
Related Recs
🏚
I have this historical tendency where the second I get the sudden unmistakable feeling that a home is no longer forever, I stop tending to it. Dirty clothes pile up, the washed laundry sits unfolded, clutter accumulates, and I no longer wish to decorate. I disengage because my future is no longer tethered to this place; I’m being pulled forward from elsewhere and it’s only a matter of time.
I apologize for my inactivity, my malaise; I tell them that I’m going through a rough time and struggling to fully function. I’m feeling burnt out after years treading water with a cinderblock tied to my ankle and I worry day and night about external forces beyond my control that threaten to sink us both. They tell me there’s always an excuse; that I’m perpetually miserable and dissatisfied; that I only care about myself.
Of course, I’m not the only person living in this house. They’ve long since absconded from their share of the duty to this space we inhabit together, and yet I’m the one who is accused of giving up.
Every week for a decade, I’ve been matching their socks into pairs, rolling up their underwear, and promptly hanging up their clothing fresh out of the dryer to prevent wrinkles from setting in—and they didn’t even notice. They told me they were perfectly happy rummaging through the laundry basket every day.
Sometimes they will wash my clothes—delicates tossed in with T-shirts, jeans thrown in the dryer and tumbled until they shrink—but nobody has ever put away my laundry but me.
Feb 21, 2025
🍒
This year, it seems like everybody is moving out of this building. It's a nice building, old, prewar, in brownstone Brooklyn, so it comes with the usual quirks of the architecture. But it attracts really young tenants. New York landlords love them. They come, pay the higher rent, leave and the rent increases again.
But it makes me sad to see them go. I got attached to their music. The glow of their garden lights. Talking in the stairwell. Through the windows.
I was lonely when I woke up this morning and realized I wouldn't run into them anymore. But this evening, I went outside to sit on my stool, read Martyr! and eat some berries.
The next-door neighbors were out. They have a son, who must be two now and he's learning how to walk up and down the steps. He practiced and practiced until he got tired and then he looked over and saw me! I waved! Said hi, buddy! He hid behind the banister! I peeked over and saw him! He hid. He peeked over and saw me! And we continued like this for a few minutes until it was time to go in.
Then I met friends of one of the new neighbors. He's a boy. The friends are girls. I like what that seems to tell me. Potentially safe. They were waiting for him to come outside. So, we talked about Martyr! and complimented each other’s shoes, and expressed how nice it is to have an endorsement for my new neighbor. He came out and they left and walked toward the train.
A few minutes later, the guy who picks through the trash and recycling came by. I like him because we share a fondness for bikes. Sometimes we start talking about our favorite streets, and where the road work is and what potholes are annoying. I don't know his name. It might be Michael. Anyway, I waved, but didn't say anything. And he looked up and asked, "are you moving?" So, I said "No, I'll be around." And he said "good. We need good people" and I said, "I do my best" and he said, "see you" and I said "drive safe" and he said "I do my best." And went on his way.
And all of it was so lovely I could have cried. The tree shook and I could see every leaf in high definition. It was all almost too much. So maybe, I'm recommending renewing your lease, or maybe I'm recommending talking to the people you meet in the world, or maybe I'm recommending sitting outside, eating raspberries until somebody talks to you.
Jul 2, 2024
The sharp scent of rain tumbles clumsily in as you tease window-hinges wider with the pads of your fingers. A siren trails close behind, uninvited, sears your eardrums, dies off down the block.
Your neighbors are arguing again. Laundry, loans, lack of commitment… like yesterday, like the day before.
You think it would be suffocating to wrap yourself up in someone else’s sheets.
It’s five o’clock. Leaning against the sill and flicking the radio dial with one recently manicured nail, you tune into the local news. Roaring wall of static, then calm conversation between two anchors bubbling up through an old set of Panasonic loudspeakers.
You are feeling incomplete today, like yesterday, like the day before.
Rigatoni boils in the kitchen. You check the leftmost cabinet and find strawberry jam, unopened. You check the cupboard and look over a tub of tahini, a collection of canned soup, and a stack of pie tins. You check the counter, behind the cutlery. Finally, you check the fridge, ducking down to see only your own brown-eyed reflection in one last — now empty — jar of Prego. Your shoulders dip.
You slip on white sneakers, not-so-white-as-they-once-were. Why did you try to paint the front door? It is peeling now, ugly like a fledgling losing young feathers. Flecks of buttery yellow dapple paisley carpeting.
The great outdoors wait for you at the bottom of a cramped stairwell with twin light fixtures, both broken.
A sky like an old sweater is draped above Brooklyn, ready to wring itself out again at any moment.
Once around the block, rubber soles brushing damp cement, you walk briskly. At first you fling yourself against the humidity, then become self-conscious and adopt a slower pace as you near the corner store.
Two dollars, sixty cents. Like last week, like the week before.
You and I, we are looking down at our phones and stumble into each other, halfway home.
It is no one’s fault.
You recognize me from somewhere, you say, and feel like a bad person for lying. You have never seen me before in your life. I ask for your number.
That night you eat too quickly, knowing you’ll wish you’d saved some leftovers.
I come over once, then again.
We go out for dinner at tacky restaurants, where art deco posters from the nineteen-thirties have pinned themselves up in scattered flocks across worn-out drywall and the menu is printed with strange font on laminated placemats. The appetizer sample photos are unnerving; the bruschetta cowers like a scared animal awash in excessive camera flash. I make a joke about it, and you laugh.
We order dishes to share. The food is always better than I expected, but not quite as good as you wanted it to be.
You don’t mind.
We talk for hours.
We agree, ballpoint pens are better.
I hold you, and the ten p.m. bus pulls you out of my arms and through the dusky streets, past crowds and utility poles.
I hold you, and we rhyme our steps. Burgundy is around us in the leaves and in the dirt. You wear a coat I gave you.
I hold you, and we swat flies out on your porch. The days are getting shorter.
I hold you, and we watch blu-ray CDs you found on sale. Soft light from the flatscreen plays across your face as you fall asleep. I keep the movie on a little longer.
I hold you. In December, we bring a blanket to Long Island and listen to the sound of snow falling on the dunes.
You call in sick for work too often.
I hold you, and you know my callouses well.
We share the same sheets; we are wrapped up in each other.
I hold you, and kiss your hair.
You smell like candied oranges.
The afternoons eat away at one another. Dishes pile like uneven layer-cakes in your kitchen sink, crested with suds.
You say you feel uninspired.
Now we argue about laundry, and the sounds of your unhappy apartment are heard through half-open windows.
You shout, eyebrows furrowed like the pages of a book. A white plate soars from the grip of a trembling hand, misses an upturned chin, and interrupts us with its shattering.
This time, it’s different.
Sleep escapes us ‘til the sun is already planted on the easternmost rooftop.
I hurt you the way I learned to, and stay awhile, but don’t know why I stay.
We sink into sweet, heavy things: the saxophone in “Charcoal Baby”, shared creamsicles on hot Saturday evenings.
I see you less and less, and remember less and less of you.
Will I see you next week?
Yes, if you text me.
You forget,
just like we’d both hoped.
Sep 17, 2024
Top Recs from @glitterpoprocks
⭐
I’m no scientist but this stuff is magical. Like those stars you can put on your ceiling.
Sep 22, 2024
✏️
After Metastasis by Ja’net Danielo
She can’t remember and maybe that is why I keep rearranging my living room, thinking about where the floor lamp should go.
She can’t remember and this
is what I tell myself when I am frightened into thinking that I am forgetting what a floor lamp is.
Yesterday night I overheard a woman telling a boy to adopt a bunny and pretend to be one so that the bunny thinks he is also a bunny
and befriends him and makes him one of their own like the wild ones do with each other in the bushes
of thirteenth street. I want to know, when do bunnies stop being rabbits?
Across the street from the home my grandmother was put in, the night owl of eateries, the pine cone open until forever
and ever where I eat chicken dumpling alphabet soup
every weekend because my grandma doesn’t know how to make
it anymore. She can’t remember and the cold noodles in the warm broth repel each other like oil and water
and while I wait for my soup to settle I draw a picture of what the noodle-alphabet spells out today and think about
what it’s going to spell out inside my stomach later and I wonder if this is what my grandma meant when said that you must not add your noodles in too late before our 67th introduction
where she asks me my name again and we sit in each others company
talking about the weather over and over again.
Pine Cone is a truck stop and Rabbits are the same thing
as bunnies and my alphabet soup says that my floor lamp should probably go in the corner.
Sep 17, 2024