It's only a paper moon

Jess.

The night before she left, I was sitting on the kitchen floor, too drunk and too tired to get up and sit in a chair. Next to me was a friend of ours who had come over at three that morning and also seemed happy to be on the floor, with a wall behind him, and the center of gravity flattened and simple. Jess and I love that some of our favorite people in the world are scattered all over: in Chicago and San Francisco and Madrid and England and the middle of nowhere in Wisconsin. But somewhere between the Australian ghost stories she was telling and the cookies I made at 4 that morning and the stories we all told about the very old people that we love, I start to wish that the world was smaller. That she didn't live so far away.

There's a house on Marlborough Road that we both love for its giant front porch and I know that when I dive into the leaves in the yard that she'll dive into them too. I like the way she stomps around in leaves, kicking her feet up high to get them off the ground. The way she tosses them into the air so they drift down onto her head.

When I get home from school the house is dark and her things are gone. I'm happy that she left, happy for her sake; it was time for her to start making her way back to Melbourne, and I knew it even while we tried to convince her to stay. I fumble around in the living room looking for the note I'm sure she's left when I remember that she always leaves notes on the table. And I am only halfway down the hall to the kitchen when I know exactly what I will find with the note: a potted amaryllis. I'm sure it will be there as much as I've ever been sure of anything. I only mentioned them once to her, days ago, passing a bodega. "Those are my favorite," I told her, as we walked past, quickly, on the way to the subway. And it's just like her to remember that I love them.

The apartment is a ruin of half-finished bottles of wine and the rinds of good cheese and cracker boxes and clementine peels and empty bottles of Lithuanian and Australian beer crammed like a crowd of tourists on the end table. She slept in the middle of all of this, in the pull-out bed, and she slept like a rock, even when the sun started streaming through the curtains and the bus brakes shrieked and the Puerto Rican men who are always having a party in the back of their parked van start playing bailar-bailar music early. And it amazed me that she could sleep so soundly and then suddenly leap out of bed and be ready 5 minutes later to seek out wonderful old diners in Greenpoint, and to chat with hilarious subway conductors in the middle of the night, and to search for gospel music in Harlem on an early Sunday morning. When she was here, the possibilities of every day were a little more beautiful and the people we met were a little more fascinating and every moment was bursting with strange and lovely potential. These are the best things a friend can give to you. The sun is coming up and I can't wait for the day to begin. Wake up, Jessie, we've got so much to do.



*This update typed while listening to a compiliation of songs about the subway.