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.”