Can you make it through the week? Pavlov’s bell rings like the tinnitus in your left ear. Positive affirmations like the blinders the horses in Central Park wear. It’s been a while since you made it through the week. The flu. Fever dreams until you’re sweating with “I get the picture.” But do you? Claustrophobic thoughts and catastrophic fantasies. Nothing new. Cortisol. You needed it. So you scratched at the inside of your skull as if it were a prison. Six white wooden columns behind an iron fence on W 13th Street just off 7th Avenue. Some trespass to vandalize. To steal. You trespassed to breathe.
Fear is a habit and I’m kicking it. You were once like the porch behind the pillars of the old church just off 7th Avenue at midnight in October. A sober place.
