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Dumaine Street
She is floating by effortlessly on a single speed below sea level on a street that may not be the heart but will not be denied its categorization as a vital organ in the exquisite corpse that is New Orleans.
Maybe she believes that I really do when she says "oh, you know," in response to my asking how she is. She pedaling the circuit of two parallel blocks, on one of which shyness and lack of curiosity has prevented me over the ten years from being anything but that white boy to its occupants, especially those in the middle near the bumps where you have to slow down. I won't make eye contact with any of those guys because there is no point to our meeting but sometimes she hangin' with them and calls out my name and I wave with a slight twist of the head to prove I am not unfriendly by nature and am also a cautious driver on a street with young children learning how to ride bikes with training wheels.
I may know a little bit about it but not the thing in its totality, no matter how intently our brown eyes connect in the telling of her unfathomable despair from running free toward ruination for twenty years to find only five off the calendar.
Looking over her shoulder coasting to the corner she says while I insert the key in the door, "that your truck?" and I say, "yeh," and she says, "nice."
Fever
Okay, I really need to access some of these ideas. They, the ideas, are literally coming at me in the night with butcher knives drawn, hacking away in the darkness at my inability to pay attention. "Pay attention," the ideas scream, sometimes wearing the costume of me, my hand flailing, shiny blade finding no purchase.
What the hell do you mean to do they or I might ask, awake, again, on the edge of my fears.
It doesn't rain where I am when I am but of late the skies are striated shades of grey, offering meaning beyond my understanding.
I read of an art opening, saw a sample of birds on a wire spelling out clearly some message I can't remember. I thought it seemed kind of silly, but there they are now, on the wires above the auto title establishment, pigeons, less than random, spelling out in some language I do not read.
It has been warm here everyday of January. I don't wear shoes when I don't have to. Seems to fit the pattern.