2004-02-04 || 8:58 a.m.

|| . . ||

because we've been through a lot together. we synchronized our breathing with each other and with the six blocks of city we were living in, riding around along its veins, wishing it good morning and good night, taking notice of when it was bloated with rain and sleepy with fog and sunny for no reason on early sunday mornings. i used to wait for the first valencia bus of the morning to take me to work at the bakery and listen to the city sleeping. he was in our room huddled under the down comforter my mum had bought for me, and i leaned against the bus stop sign in the dark feeling like i was the only person awake in our little world made of panaderias and corner market fruit stands, hills and parks and reels of super 8 shot in washington square park, mismatched socks and old lady dresses and old man blazers bearing mysterious stains of age and events taking place before we were born. we were both twenty-one. we both had never lived with a sweetheart before. the backdrop of the city allowed us to play movie roles: we go to the laundromat wearing each other's clothing. we cut each other's hair. we have an argument while crossing the street for the benefit of the people drinking coffee at muddy waters. i read to him when he takes a bath while the other boys of the flat wrestle in the kitchen. we hold onto each other at night like orphans, using excuses of lack of heat and interminable rain and firstlove and the possibility of pulling a few heartstrings of the audience with the scene. we synchronized living, combining breath and spare change and taste in food and music, and the city enclosed us in a tiny bubble that has been preserved like air in amber, caught in time.

i now live in this city and he lives in another. i operate in this bubble (cats and quilts and casual boyfriends. trains and morning coffee in the car and carpal tunnel and a yellow house filled with lovelies) and he operates in his (paint under fingernails and corduroy and stretching canvas. warehouse basement and cooking elaborate dinners and entertaining ladies wearing scarves). sometimes the two converge and we visit our city, attempting to invoke the past by way of polaroid and sitting in the same parks and restaurants, singing the same songs while crossing the bridge, and synchronizing breathing.

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