Underground Stairs are easier to climb if you count, one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen fourteen fifteen sixteen. Gives the mind something to do other than think tired dirty hungry. Up. Out. Time to go. Met by rain and wind, add wet, add cold. Descend the Big Hill - in pocket touch the key that will unlock Home. Past the absence of the fruit-stand man, he has fled this storm and left a hole in the scenery. Ambulence siren, taxi zoom, wait until the M-3 whizzes past and then go. Reach the far shore of the avenue safely. Walk past the gates enclosing the Dark Temple, empty at this hour and looking mournful. Up comes the thicket of miniature beasts in front of the Third Avenue Tower, on their evening prowl. Hurry, skitter past. Here, the kindly restaurant, whose vents blow hot pizza-air, whose windows encase families. Both strengthen for the last of the journey. Veer left. The Early-Closing Deli is closing early. There, right behind the smoking Deli man, the entrance. Open door. Click, it has shut. In. Now, from the chair beside the window, smile and listen to the wind gust.

Think. Memorize. Sip. Claire finishes the coffee, Claire whispers what she studies as to study better. But without little sipping deadlines, she tires. Done. Laundry-time. Pack up. Walk home. Claire does laundry and whispers, light. Dark. Dry-clean. Claire lowers the machine's metal lid. Measure, Claire. Pour. One dollar. Claire knows what is what. Knows not to wonder. It isn't wondering time, Claire. These phrases pile until they form whisper-walls. They tell her all things, the walls do. She doesn't have to think, really. Really think. Still, look at Claire, so safe, so hugged by their direction. I try to hear their whispers again, but I've deafened. What? What was that? Speak up and quick, I'm shivering in vastness. Don't you know, in an unwalled world, the winds are loose. They are free and you have to feel them.

She stopped telling me “you can’t”
She?
Yeah
She who?
I dunno, But she always said “You can’t. ” The “you can’t” girl, I guess.
So she stopped saying that?
Yeah.
What does she say instead?
Nothing. She’s gotten real quiet.
She doesn’t say anything else?
Nope.
Do you miss her talking to you?
No. She ‘s never helpful. And she’s ugly.
Ugly?
Yeah. Her face is always in the same position. And she is too skinny. Brittle.
Yuck.
Yeah.
But she ‘s gone!
No, she just doesn’t say much nowadays.
Oh, right. So, is it just silent?
Is what?
Your head.
Yes. Silent. Spacious.
All those “can’ts” filled it up before, huh?
You bet.
How does it feel? To be spacious?
Like home.
Wow. That’s great.
Yes.
Who was this chick again?
Just some girl I grew up with.

stop stop stop! You don't listen. You won't be still with me. You are like that after-work woman, her collar ruffled a day's worth, yet rushing to make the 6 train, running to the library to pick up that documentary. She is meeting with girlfriends, she is having mojitos with a date. She and the date are going to the dance festival, it is heartbreaking, she is crying. She is always moving, zoom. Maybe I would be her, I would abound with knowledge of historic you, who are rich with a thousand long histories. Possibly I would be growing new, sturdy friends, long lasting like adult teeth. I would be displaying my single self for sale. But no. She is ghostly. I need silence, and I need to be still. I'm letting you soak in! your response is a shrug, and a call me if you wanna come out.

Lets talk about permanence. Not permanents, that's for your hair. Permanence. M is off being permanent with his girlfriend in California. They're number one on each other's list and when you're number one on someone's list it means you don't have to feel Weather. Ever-changing Weather. K and A are permanent, too. But I don't think K or A or M or his girlfriend B feel all of the weather; no, because B does not change to M, nor M to B, K to A and the reverse. There is still family, that's something, but you have to factor in distance, which diludes permanence. What will be permanent to me, thickly gooily unleaving? Don't you dare say nothing is, or no-one.

J asks, how long until you go back?
A couple years, states B.
I might go back to school, says P.
'Til I want kids, is K's answer.
Maybe never
is mine, and silent, tagged onto a vision of the city deserted, dark and wind-whirring, everyone gone to California. Suddenly I'm silly, having left my family, loved ones back there, what was I thinking? Finding them expendable, spendable like my savings, compared to my desire to gather, compared to my great whispering Curiosity! The conversation carries around me but I'm statuesque, thinking: have I ever felt this before? Thinking: isn't this new lonesomeness interesting, and then: I hope they can forgive me.

When I leave the new dance class, I end up in Rome.

Or, the edifices, suddenly, have become massive. There are many massive structures Here, but they are tall and sleek and modern. Over this way they looked carved from mountains, pantheonic stone excavations. The bank-fronts have pillars I mistakedly call isosceles, and their names, FIRST BANK OF THE UNION and such are carved above. They angle oddly, making a-linear avenues, crooked alleyways, lining the streets like hushed monsters.

How silly that these giants sit amidst the sunshine of a perfectly modern day. They should be dark, ghostly; wind blowing through their corridors because those who built them have long been dead. They served a different humanity, but mine enters and exits their marble-stepped mouths without so much as a bow to acknowledge their resilient grandeur. I smile at them, look way up at their tops where the eyes would be.

Walking towards where I do live, I think, this city must be lonesome. It mingles with us who cannot relate. We have not seen what these monsters, these tenements, these old lamp-posts and bronze street-clocks have seen. Into the building that is ivy-covered, with little shutters, move yuppies and a bottom-level Pottery Barn; the structures carry on though they cannot choose who comes through. They watch change after change. I watch them watching change.