Snapshots, Fragments and Manhattan

        For the last twelve hours everything has faded to black.  Now, light spills uncontrollably everywhere.  I haven’t moved from the sofa.  Emotionally drained.  Numb to all feeling.  Pen and paper should be my salvation, but I can’t get the words to pour out of me.  I am suspended in a state where I am emotionally barren.  If I could just purge myself of what I want to say, but can’t.  Just write it down on paper, cement my thoughts, and then throw it all away.  I try to traceback through the fragments of memories in my mind, but I couldn’t figure out how I arrived here.  How did I fall down, so fast and so far into the depths of this rabbit hole?  Something broke inside of me.  

        I remember now.  That bridge going up in smoke.  We should have just let all our mistakes lay down to rest, in a box stuffed away someplace, and never open it again.  We didn’t do that.  Instead, glasses were thrown, plates were smashed, and words exchanged cut deeper than shards of the wine bottles we shattered.  I walked down empty avenues for hours retracing my steps back to my old loft.  I never rented it out all these years, I just kept it.  He can keep that poignantly weathered cobblestone house, and the memories we made there.  He can keep the old black Maserati he drove us to Los Angeles in, with the windows down on a Sunday road trip.  He can keep his Harvard sweatshirt which I use to steal and wear, the vinyl records we collected, and the champagne bottle from our wedding day, which we filled with all our hopes and dreams that we wrote down on scraps of paper.  He can keep the bouquet of white roses he held in his hand when he stood there waiting for me at the Arrivals at JFK two days ago.  He was smiling like a fox, and hadn’t shaved for days, wearing his suit and converse sneakers, I loved that look, it always looked good on him.  Finally, he can have back his grandmother’s emerald ring, but I’m taking Manhattan.  We loved recklessly.  Now we can never recover what we once had.  Too many fractures, shatters a heart.  

        Rummaging around my old bedroom, I find my mother’s vintage black leather jacket.  It fits like the warm hugs my mom use to give me, when everything was crashing down, and collapsing beneath me.  I slip my hands into the pockets, it’s a habit I can’t break, I love the pockets of jackets, especially this one.  I find a polaroid my mom took of me.  My face is completely hidden by my camera lens, and my loose curls blown back by the wind.  We were on the Brooklyn Bridge that day.  I was taking a photo of her, and she swiftly held up her Polaroid camera taking a snapshot, stealing a candid moment.  A stack of onyx picture frames are still left in a crate.  I never opened that art gallery on 26th Street, in Chelsea.  It still remains as just another abandoned warehouse.  The renovations were finished years ago, stainless steel industrial look merged with stark pearl walls, and an accent distressed brick wall at the forefront.  My Nikon has long been neglected.  My 21st birthday present from my mom and dad.  I can only remember them now as fragments and faded echoes.  All I have to hold in my hands now, is my Nikon DSLR.  It will be ok, if I run out on this day that desperately want’s to draw me back to last night.  The blurry montage of flashbacks plays on loop like a record I want to smash.  Black Aviators, my mom’s leather jacket, my old Ramones T-shirt, ripped jeans and converse sneakers and my Nikon, I’m ready to go, and fall in love again with Manhattan.

        Today I will only see the world in black and white.  No grey areas.  I have always appreciated the candor of a camera lens.  Snapshots of moments exactly how are they are, no distortions.  A few sample shots of Times Square, lights flashing everywhere, the bustle of people who have places to go, and people to see.  The yellow taxi’s run through the veins of the city.  “Walk” then “Don’t Walk” flicker back and forth, like an indecisive person torn between two choices.  I love the white stripes across the dirty streets like bandaids trying to hide the cracks.  Turning the corner and I find myself on a new page in this unfolding day.  Somebody has written poetry on the streets.  The words “make a wish” fires off a myriad of thoughts racing through my mind.  Across the street its a Starbucks with an outdoor patio.  It's fascinating, the sea of people immersed in their private spheres.  Turning through the pages of the New York Times, sipping coffee, reading a vintage copy of The Great Gatsby, gossiping about the night before, writing the next great American novel on their Mac, laughing, ranting and raving on the phone to their broker on Wall Street, all these people just lost from the rest of the world in their own little bubbles.