It’s fucking Philadelphia

Olivia offers me one of her cigarettes and it tastes exhilarating. I take three drags and remember that I’m alive. I think about it for a few hours. Think of the number 7. Think of God. Think how my mom said the number 7 is God’s favorite number. The homeless man on the street sleeps in front of the community sign and Olivia keeps telling me to Google the number of empty houses 

in America. I don’t. I just hope there’s one for my mother. I have 7 dollars in my pocket, and I give the man a lemonade. He says he remembers when the label was different. I want to tell him I love him, or God bless, but I don’t say anything at all. I just think of my mother, and I want to tell her I’m sorry. I want to tell her I love her no matter what. 

I keep saying “It’s fucking Philadelphia” because it’s funny, and I want to laugh. I want to laugh loud enough to feel happy. I want to be happy long enough to take up space. It’s fucking Philadelphia and I learn none of the street names. I find my way to the hotel every night looking for the yellow wall brick wall, the 7/11, or remembering how many parking signs there are along the way. 

The girl we met on the street named Hudson said that Woody’s is a good bar. She said it’s the gay scene and she’s so pretty, so I ask her to come. She plays the xylophone, and this is just another reason for me to believe she’s the coolest person here. When she shows up, I can’t hear her over the music. I can’t hear much so I dance. I dance so much that I remember I’m alive. 

It's 1 AM and my friend Mackenzie holds my hand. The bright lights of Philadelphia over us. I feel spring setting in under the clouds. The night at our shoes. Loud streets filled with feet. Each color rushed past me in the blink of an eye. The floating images and prayers through dark nights. She holds my hand and tells me I’m safe. I can feel the world in her palm.

I feel every beauty of each song and I can’t stop talking because for once I want her to know me. I am afraid she already does. I haven’t felt real in a while. I haven’t felt real in months. I want to be sorry for this. I didn’t mean to be a person who didn’t want to be a person at all. Everyone here wonders why I don’t say much, and everyone remembers when I had so much to say. 

I keep telling myself to just go for it because her eyes are such a pretty shade of green and they match the romper she spilled butter on last week. In my head, I go on and on about her eyes and remember the poetry I have written for her. 

Dance lovely in that sweet midnight glow. 

God knew light compliments your soul. 

When she kisses me, I catch glimpses of time. I am already worried I will break her heart. I hope our kiss was memorable. I hope my brain chooses it as a memory to keep. I try to take pictures as if my memory is going. I wonder where it would go? I tell her I won’t tell a soul but I’m afraid the passion behind my eyes will say it for me. I hope our kisses never remind her of regret. I hope they never taste like guilt. 

We don’t speak to Hudson again until the next night. We go to a few bars and end up in an alley. The wall reads “I don’t have to sell my soul to be hot.” I wonder if you’d have to sell your soul to be happy. We smoke in a back alley, and I start to sway. Hudson is so pretty, and I trust her. She talks to everyone like she knows them, and I admire that. 

I met the prettiest girl in the city, and I didn’t even kiss her. There’s so much to learn from people and I can’t wait for my next adventure. She said she doesn’t date, and we should all just be friends; everyone. I think I understand what it means to have a friend. The pain in my stomach reminds me of what it means to be one. 

Mother tells me to finish school. But 5 days ago, I threw up blood and my girlfriends picked me up off the bathroom floor. Where is God? Tell him I’m sorry I questioned the boy in the whale. Tell him that sometimes it gets dark for me too. Tell him I’m sorry, so terribly sorry, that when I

think of church I think of rape. I think of T and each day I don’t say his name, I’m afraid of what will happen if I do. 

I’m so afraid everyone is waiting for the perfect opportunity to leave me. Waiting for me to wake up, waiting for me to care more than I already do, and fuck, I care so fucking much. I care so fucking much that my fingers bleed. I still don’t think this is enough. 

Cait texts me the Lesbian Master Doc after I tell them how hard I try with boys over rolled ice cream. I try hard with boys, and perhaps now more than ever I am trying to forget it. Even when I do remember, I don’t want to. I don’t want to remember a man or his touch. 

I don’t want to remember T. 

I keep telling Mackenzie that boys don’t matter. I tell her we’re young, gay, in Philly and no one knows us here. This is how I petitioned for our fairy tale but guilt swallows her like morning. It covers every part of her face, and I don’t want to say it, but she looks at me differently now. I pretend I don’t notice. I say I don’t notice. 

Oh, to have known love even if it was just for a moment. I’ve waited in a moment. Time has passed me by. Pass me not, O gentle Savior. How long it's been since I’ve remembered time. All I remember are faces, tears, the bathroom floor, and the color. The color of the wind and the Earth beneath my feet.