2001-04-13 || 11:29 a.m.

|| all that pushing and pulling ||

almost every time i take center street to the bart station i run into you. i see you from up the street and you see me and we smile and then look down at the sidewalk. we reach the spot in front of the movie theater and stop and it begins. how are you and how are you and where are you going and where are you going and the awkwardness creeps in. today your hair is shorter and you have recently shaved. you are wearing new shoes. you tell me you are moving to philadelphia in august. you ask about michael. you laugh and look away and look at the sidewalk and i catch your glances only by accident. i tell you i thought of you today, out of nowhere, and i was going to write about you in my diary.

(remember when we would spend so many nights in your room, the three of us, smoking and listening to records and finding new patterns in the rug?)

(these are the pictures taped to your wall: a still of woody allen from one of his movies. he has a long beard and is playing chess. an old my-goodness-my-guinness poster. a photograph of an ex-girlfriend. a photograph of a lady bowling team. a movie poster that is hazy to me now. you said it was a movie you really liked when you were little. you saw it in the theater with your dad. found photographs of a forest. a picture you made with newsprint and cellophane and cardboard and squares.)

(there is a reel of super 8 somewhere, undeveloped and damaged, of you and me and my sister and michael on thanksgiving. we are climbing the hill behind my apartment. it was too dark to film but i did anyway. to go through the motions of recording. to at least make the effort.)

(corduroy and sweaters and shoes worn formerly by old men. the smell of alcohol and cigarettes always on your breath. the way your face looked that night we were seated in your living room taking turns with whippets.)

(you write stories of girls in party dresses drinking mint julips in your backyard. one dies in a train wreck.)

i miss you.

you push that last sentence away, kick it to the curb with your toe, and we run out of things to say. you better get going. and then, like every time, you put out your hand. we both look at it. it hangs there, suspended, like a fish just pulled from water. and then, like every time, i push it away and give you a hug that lasts a bit too long.

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