Second Section of Other Prose/Poetry Collaboration

Running past instinct, I board the bus that will take me to the train back to my city. The mist is still low, it’s early morning. I try to name all the shades of green in the trees.

I stay awake until the bus crosses the bridge between this state and the next. When we were little, on our way to see our grandparents in Connecticut, we pushed our feet as far forward as they could go, under the seats – I’m in New Hampshire first! Then we threw our hands back – I’m in Maine last!

The train ride – dry yellow grasses, pebbled gravestone, broken-windowed warehouse, stacked boxcars. The bridge that says “Trenton Makes the World Takes” in orange lights. Finally, my city’s skyline, radio towers blinking red, Liberty One lit Eagle green, the Verizon building still tallest. Every new skyscraper has a company’s name.

The Comcast building is a hole in the ground behind the hotel where we live. I see it from our laundry room window, and I try to remember to take pictures of its progress, although I’m not sure why. Instinct.

My grandfather made an album of a new building’s progress in 1940. The album had thick black paper and the pictures were all black and white and small, two by three inches. My grandfather labeled the stages of the project in white pencil. That album was the one thing I gave away, donated to a museum in Hartford. It’s the one thing I should have kept.

Sometimes traffic on the wet street sounds like ocean waves. From the hotel balcony I try to pick out stars in the humid sky. My hands palm the damp metal railing. “It’s an emergency,” a crazy man once told me, “that I’m not with you.”

First Section of Prose/Poetry Collaborative Piece

When Leila leaves, she sees a playing card lying in the snow next to the steps. It’s bent in half, lengthwise. She nudges it with her toe, flips it enough to see that it’s the Jack of Hearts. Figures.

Anything can set her off when she feels this way – the thought of playing War with the kids slumps her shoulders. Jason always got mad when the Jack came around – he wanted a card named after him. So they took to calling the Joker the Jason. Leila wonders if the kids still play that way, still call it that.

The air is that dry cold, the kind that hurts the inside of her nose and makes it hard to breathe deep. She balls her hands in stretchy cotton fabric and wraps her arms around her chest, wishing she had more than this sweatshirt, which is so big for her that the cold air comes right up at the hem and fills the empty space around her body. Still, it was nice of Ron to let her borrow it. She puts her nose into the collar, to keep it warm and also to inhale the scent of man – car oil and woodsmoke and shaving cream.

Snow is crusted along the lip of the sidewalk, all the way down the hill. The sky is just starting to turn from flat grey to something brighter. It’ll be a pain to get her car down the icy incline to the main road. She’s glad she’s not parked right out front, though. She doesn’t want anyone inside to make a big deal out of her leaving. She’s just ready to go. Her head doesn’t ache yet, but she’s thirsty, and she feels the tension in her neck and between her shoulderblades. All day long at work she will roll her neck, stretch her arms out in front of her, crack her back, but it won’t do much good.