for joanna brouk & nate dimeo *** when the levee broke, and there was only the vames and vestas in the spires ¹, a young girl who was spiraling into her fate, she was born in 1942, she had a necklace, she had long bracelets, when she rubbed her hand on the wood drawers of her mother’s apartment building, she could hear what was underneath them, with each little beadlet from the necklace dancing across the top of that wood. she could hear the empty place where the socks were, she heard something beating where the shirts were, something around the heart. when she held her mother she couldn’t feel those things, because when she held her mother all she wanted was to be held back. who couldn’t want that? so she left, closed the door, locked it, kissed the mezuzzah, walked downstairs, walked by the halal butcher shops. she walked by the stores where geese hang from their necks, feathers plucked. she saw groups of women dancing by the shore. how old was she when she realized that sometimes the water looked like it was about to spill over onto the pavement soak the city and sometimes it felt low, like one could step down onto a boat and need a hand to hold them. life was a strange thing. as it became more beautiful it became more strange, each leaf revealing a different part of it. my ac unit turns on sometimes something unexpected would happen, like a loud sound. sometimes she could find pictures on the walls, posters hanging. “war is the mix of the worlds!” “work hard and change, and develop.” what were these trying to tell to her? behind her stood droves of man staring at them flailing their arms. but her she was curious about the yellow light. she wanted to lay down by the water, keep her eyes fixated on it until she saw it go from low to high. these things are nearly impossible to do. the river must be changing to keep its name, like the fire, like the wind. when she first looked at a woman on her block, covered with red clothing, and felt something stronger than the wind that shakes the highest trees, she knew there was something natural about it, natural about love, attraction, it roars in us, it awakens us, it is beautiful in us, and it passes through us. so she followed it where it passed her, it was like a little blue spirit walking down the block following it around the strates, back towards the butcher shop, and what horror, with the butcher and his partner dave looked at her, when, mixed with the meats, she saw them, holding each other, in the secrecy of the ancient new york city night. ** back home she kissed the mezuzah, kiss*, laid down in her bed - but it wasnt just her bed, it was the bed of her and her family, and if one of them shook all night, well… i guess things were a lot more explicit back then. without our walls, without our phones, without newer ways to walk around the field