And that's when I realized things were passing by me like dragonflies past my ear: all the moments I thought I held captive. Like seeing him for the first time and feeling my body draw to him like a magnet. It’s no longer there. He was no longer standing in the doorway I now stare at, empty. And that was when I realized things were passing through me like layer cake through my intestines. What once stood pleasingly organized by color was now chemically altered, a hundred feet or more below where I stand, swimming in public works water.
Why do my eyes strain to see him there again? Why am I even allowed access to the electric memory? Perhaps it is not I that holds it captive, but it that pad-locked me behind rusted bars: whereas I think I am standing against the 1919 wood-paneled wall of the sunken 55 Bar, I am actually butted up against sweaty rock where I fester in a dampness consisting of the stone's perspiration, my tears and urine. Like a cigarette, half smoked, half exposed, in a puddle on Christopher Street.