h a n - k r u

Pink places, warm lights, setting sun. Empty bottles/minds, purpose on the brain but summer on the tongue.

These strangers quickly became my friends. We spent the past year scattered across France, and our past lives before that scattered across the world. I wasn’t sure if I would like summer school. But what’s not to like about sleepy mornings, half-hearted academia, and champagne soirées in crumbling, high ceilinged apartments? 

We're doing pre-drinks, I'm feeling like myself, and I'm excited about this. I like these people. I like that they're different. I like that they are different, because that means they are a little like me.

Empty bottles of Stella, chardonnay, rosé: all of the pretty pale things. Unsuspicious smiles. We're all just trying to live a little closer to our bones and shine out the whites of our eyes. 

The plan is to go to The Cabasson, an unpretentious bar down the street. Apparently, it's the only cool place in town. I'm game. It's midnight and girls are saying, “are we headed to the Cabasson or not?” They’re faltering, but not me. We walk, and it's close, just a few blocks. Smokers litter the sidewalk outside. 

I follow Isabel's hot pink hair inside. Note to self: stay friends with girls who have pink hair. The bar’s crowded, and some of the others are getting discouraged. But I can't pass up on this. 

---

We scope the bar, it's crowded, but lord, it is so lovely. These are the kinds of people I've been looking for. We spot a table of guys, decently young, decently good looking, with a few empty seats. They have an untouched pack of Uno cards in front of them. We dance around the idea of making a move, when I finally just tell Isabel to use her pretty Parisienne French and ask if we can play Uno with them. They say yes, and we file in. I'm next to Jade, we're both getting happily punch drunk. Somewhere in those first moments, she must have recognized Benjamin. She said nothing. 

We go around the table, exchanging names. They tell us they are German, and Isabel starts speaking German (of course). Someone asks where we go to school. We pop off with Sciences Po, that we’re here for summer school. They go quickly silent, faces jesting with disbelief, and Benjamin’s a bit darker than the rest. “Really,” his brother asks, edging out laughter, “because that's where he teaches.” I'm taken aback. He's the beautiful one at the table.

I wouldn't have even imagined in that moment all that would happen. 

We're quick to counter that we don't actually even go to this town’s campus, that we're mostly students at Le Havre, plus me, at the satellite campus in the south. Oh, and Jade goes to Reims. There is a beat of laughter, and eyebrows are raised. She knows exactly who he is – and reluctantly shows it as her eyes dart between the table and her phone. What the fuck ever, we decide. Let's just play Uno. 

So, we do, and it's perfect fun. Benjamin’s brother buys a bottle for the table. We're all yelling and our eyes are creasing at the corners and drinks are spilled and sly smiles exchanged. Yeah, Angela Merkel’s a badass. Shut the fuck up, that's such fake news. Hey, let's get another drink? 

He's stunning; angelic with the devil's smile. He discloses in what feels like a dialogue between just the two of us his age. I say I don't mind, and it's true. 

Isabel and I step outside to smoke. I ponder the importance of pink haired girls. “That professor is hot, isn't he?” “Yeah god, he's so hot... I don’t know if I can stop myself from making a move,” I say, playing coy -- but it's much more of a fever dream than a reality. 

same songs on repeat

looking at photos you can’t bring yourself to delete

if you could get off campus a couple days 

you could sleep this off, numb that pain 

--

all of your friends are moving to New York or LA

think you might too, they say the end is soon anyway

but you know nothing much comes from running away 

except that ache in your chest and another year of missed birthdays

--

religious leaders hide out in suburbia 

while modern teenagers formulate love in algebra class

thought you left it in the past it gets dragged up nonetheless

turn on TV and your brain goes to static

cognitive dissonance of the way we once had it 

and the way it is now, red phone ringing panic 

--

the dialectic of the hive-mind collective

and the isolation of life behind a screen 

“could i call you right now? i’m standing in the crowd, 

please”

--

used guitars, clubs and bars, avant-garde, crashing hard on 

the amphetamine

just 3 chords, not much more, hit the floor, god i’m yours 

I was ten years old, I said,

when Lehman Brothers 

dissolved into thin air, 

like those twin towers, 

when I was even 

younger than that.

Funny, funny. Life is funny. “Funny,” I said, laughing, as we headed back to his place. Is this the point of no return? Where am I going next, and will I know when I’m leaving here? It’s a relief to know that you’re never too old to do something stupid. Keep faith in there being an answer; this is all a part of the plan.

Do you remember being a child, and holding a sea shell up to your ear? Do you remember someone saying you’ll hear the ocean waves, and because you trust them, you do? Really, you heard your own breath. But you believe, and your breath becomes a part of the mystery. I think it’s beautiful, all of these things: the sea, your breath, the faith and the unknown. There’s a bit of you in the ocean, and there’s a bit of the unknown in your breath. There’s a bit of God in there, somewhere.

I picked up his copy of Machiavelli’s “The Prince” that morning in November. I held it in my hands, turned it over. It was worn at the corners, bent and bruised, dogeared with folded pages. He had written notes in the margins. Simply holding the book felt more intimate than any of the nights we had spent together.

He glanced nervously at my hands. I could tell he wanted me to put it down. I smiled, feeling shy, and oddly embarrassed. It was too close to his reality -- a reality that I am not a part of. My action had left him naked, and in that moment, we were both exposed to the truth. This was how things must be, henceforth: separated by quintessence, and connected by consequence alone.

Coming back home? What’s that like? I wonder, musing with the way the leaves cast speckled shadows. I had forgotten their dance. I had forgotten the evergreen and the forest roads, the mill town origin story and tall tales.

Coming back home, and seeing how time had turned boys to men, I wonder if I look any older. Someone told me the other day that my voice had become that of a woman. I liked that compliment, I wish I had asked some follow up questions, like, does that mean I sound stronger, or tougher, or like I’d smoked a pack a week (because I had). Coming back home and seeing faces in cafés that I know but won’t acknowledge, and they won’t say hi to me either. We don’t need to drag up the past. It’s common courtesy not to. But time has made you older, you look like a man now.

Coming home, and coming undone. Lying awake, both during the day and the night. Eerie calm, making love with the comfortable numb. Blink and an hour goes by. Sharp sobs, then nothing at all.

Coming home? What’s that like? It’s wanting to go back. Back to where you were before, and also back to the time when this really was home. I want it back, the early summer days where I was loved by his lips and there was nothing to do but everything.

Falling in love. When I was younger, I was careful. But there’s no time for that in this modern world of jet fuel and sudden death. Now when I fall in love, it’s reckless. There’s no way things could feel this good forever, or be this good again. Reckless, I’ll take what I want and I guess that’s you.

It was like having a fever, hot and cold at the same time; no mercy. Heartsick, anxious, low and angry -- though also full of wonder and joy and a deep peace. Dublin’s a surprise, and always will be to me.

It's dark. The lights cast on the Liffey looked like art, or maybe something even more important than that. My hair was tucked up into my beanie so it wouldn’t be tangled by the wind, and to avoid the attention of the men running a small cocaine operation on the corner of Merchant's Quay and Winetavern Street. 

I walked down the quays, and it's so cold. My stomach felt empty and my mind like Monet's water lilies, my cheeks pricking in the cold, my feet dancing along Merchant's Quay, then Essex Quay, then Wellington. 

He built his whole life around being a demon; brandishing razor blades and barber shears to hide a heavy heart. He's got all he needs, he smiles in his life of sin. Part of that heaviness walked with me as I pushed through commuters and conversationalists gathered at the bus stops and the taxi stations and the doorways of pubs I will never drink in.

In the half light I felt saintly -- despite being half dead some nights and most mornings. Just days before I'd held all the pills in my hand and considered not waking up. And yet, in the twilight, and the song of the street, I found salvation.

I arrived at exactly 6 pm. I peaked my head in the window and there he is, chopping away at a grey bearded man, concentration showing the lines on his face. I knew he'd be running late anyway. I have a cigarette.

It's a repeat, a replica, but it's not doomed. It's not a saga, it’s just a sketch. It's a reminder that we have the opportunity to be brave whenever we choose -- whether that be in loosing your hair or loving a stranger.

I walk into the shop. The music is flying, the razors and the tattoo guns buzzing. The Ink Factory is at full production capacity. I'm greeted by the man behind the register. He looks surprised to see me, like I don't belong. I tell him I'm there for an appointment with Tom, and he checks me in. I don't look over to Tom -- but I do wonder if he is looking over to me. The man across the counter has broad shoulders. He asks me if he can take my coat, if i'd like any coffee or tea. Tea would be grand, I say, and the words feel too loud in my mouth.

things are different now. i take myself out to dinner. i sleep through the night. i enjoy my hours of uninterrupted thought, no longer punctuated by his linger.

 but it comes in waves, remembering him. tonight i stood on the corner, having a cigarette and breathing in the heat of the city when i watched a stranger in a sundress run her hand across her brow. and in that motion i watched him rub his eyes when he didn't know what to say, those crinkled eyes he swore "betrayed him." in that motion i saw his fluttering eyelids in the morning. suddenly the heat of the city and the bodies and the laughter pushed up against me, heavy, like his eyes on mine the night we first met.

 the woman in the sundress put her fork and knife down on the table, leaning into the conversation with a gentle laugh. her edges are soft. i wonder if the man across from her is in love. i wonder if she feels his eyes across a crowded room. i wonder if she feels the weight of the summer and the humidity and the humanity, if all of us have comatose loves that deviate beyond science and reason.

it all comes down to this // it all came down to you // i want to move on // close my eyes without seeing yours // but hope is for presidents // and dreams are for people sleeping // we’re all a few decisions away from becoming what we fear // maybe love was finally worth it // and maybe that ship sailed // no fear of no return.

i won’t forget that pull of rum, that sunset, and those friends // my ghost sheets in the wind, my mind on the loose // back from travels, i turned crimson in the porchlight, put out my cigarette, and claimed there was a devil between us // my ghost rests in peace. 

the angel-headed hipster taught me importance // now she lives a still life // those nights all became one // and this day seems neverending // do i miss you?  

Tell me why -- tell me why all my cherished memories of you are playback scenes of an indie film. Based on a true story.

In this plotline, glory days stretch centuries. What a lifetime, golden haze and cherry trees. I'm back, or I never left. We're still seventeen. It's a tantalizing rewind of the things I would've said, the places I would've held your hand.

Actuality slipping / accute details missing. I color the numbers with what I loved most about you: your skin in the grass, your words on the page, the way the moon pulled your mind like the tide. There's no hurt. No vancancy. All of the rooms full with the many faces of our affection, our defection.

I never told you that you have the most beautiful wrists

This rain reminds me of black coffee, morning cigarettes. Of wood floors dusted with liability, the ocean's grey eternity. In this rain, I see your (weary) eyes cast across the room, sand in the sheets.

Your midnight skin, out of place in the 8-am-back-to-bed light.