I am bored but it’s my duty to be attentive

Agnes Martin, Buds, ca. 1959, oil on canvas

I knew we lived over the tracks but I didn’t know how over the tracks we were until I crawled out onto the fire escape today, sneakers hanging over the Q train’s cross hatching.

I am reading an uncorrected proof of Lorrie Moore’s short stories, a 700+ page paperback the color of a taxi. It is difficult to read, I mean, it’s hard to hold up in bed at night. It doesn’t support its own weight (these are not the types of comments you can leave in a review but I am telling you anyway it is difficult.) The real book, of course, is a hardcover.

In Moore's story What You Want To Do Fine one character hides from a bee in a phone booth for twenty minutes only to be stung when he comes out. “It wasn’t true what they said about bees. They were not all that busy. They had time. They could wait.” I am suddenly very busy; I have all the time in the world to sting. A train whizzes by beneath my thighs, the steel roof as smooth as a dolphin with motion. Made by Kawasaki, like my uncle’s motorcycle.

I hold onto one bannister to stave off vertigo. (Sometimes I lean against a column underground, but only if I hear someone weaving down the platform.) My legs shake a little. Maybe with fear, maybe because my ass is too bony for the rusted slats of the balcony. Bone on bone. I lean back against the brick wall. It is warm from the sun. I stop vibrating.