ni le beurre ni l'argent du beurre.

maybe i'm too proud to deal with any of it.

it rains. it rains overground. it rains underground. it rains from the ground. up. it rains like firecrackers on my ceiling room windows. it rains on a random cafe in gramercy where a blonde waitress with an indistinguishable accent adjusts her top in the window where the raindrop shadows make lovely pockscars on her face.

"how are you?" she says.

"do you really want to know?" i say.

"that bad?" she says.

"yes," i say.

"no," she says.

"how are you?" i say.

pause.

"do you really want to know?" she says.

"yes."

and she says, but she doesn't have to say. thank my luck for wandering into the only bar in town whose forlorn waitress's ipod shuffle function reads everyone's mind and plays nothing but the smiths, the cure, and cat power. i think the rain was djing. from the ground up; from like firecrackers.

"tell me what's killing you," she says as i leave.

i say: "when I want to tell someone, i know where you work."

it all began here: five hours of nearly hungover on a bus. i say nearly because i can't, unfortunately, blame the whiskey this time. it was gray all around the windows. couldn't see for six feet out. she had black hair. black eyes. black wool coat. i didn't know until i breathed on her neck and grabbed her wrist that she didn't have a wrist. her arm just tapered off to a dull point. she did have a right hand, but i didn't hold it. why did i feel like i knew it all so well?

after the storm she said "i will never love you."

"i will never love you, too," i said, like a reflex.

everyone tells me everything, and yet i tell them nothing. how can i have so little shame and all this embarrassment?

and then my heart is insulted from so far away. à quoi ça sert d'aimer?

ha.