Fog as a Body I Once Lived In

Notes from a city I carried home

Some nights the fog gets there first.

Before memory.

Before I can stop it.

It sits at the doorway.

The way New York used to stay in my clothes.

Long after I was inside.

Long after I washed them.

I got high to blur the edges.

Not to escape.

Just to make the shape less sharp.

I didn’t have words yet.

Only friction.

New York took me in whole.

Sydney is where I wake up inside the fog and forget why.

The air here is warm.

That still surprises me.

There was a night before someone left.

A body next to mine.

Breathing lined up.

The stupid hope that if nothing moved, nothing would end.

Ridgewood felt submerged.

I smoked on Woodward.

Walked until hours fell apart.

Sundays bled into Mondays.

Every morning already wrong.

What stays isn’t him.

It’s the cats.

Warm weight.

Fur on my hands.

I fed them like it mattered.

I left thinking I’d be back.

I didn’t know that was the last morning.

I didn’t know doors close quietly.

I can’t remember the walls of the room.

Just a yellow shirt.

Too bright.

Like a warning I pretended not to read.

The fog isn’t a person.

It’s the city.

It’s wanting somewhere else so badly you wake up there

and still haven’t arrived.