Don't Forget to Write

Back to School

Finally, Monday was here, and I felt like an optimistic third-grader on the first day of school after a long summer of trying to escape the prison of home and spending an exponentially higher amount of time getting hit by wooden spoons and dodging the fast balls of sandals thrown by a grumpy Portuguese mother. Not sure if that was what everybody's summers were like, but that's what mine were like in my youth, before I started spending summers with my grandmother. But, anyway, I was young again, in that I was excited to finally be doing something productive. I woke up at 5AM again, as I would for a while, and had five hours to kill before class. Bruno was awake, too. We took Milo for another long walk as the sun rose and illuminated the windows within the stone and brick of our neighborhood in a bright orange foil. When we got back Milo drank his water and went back to take a nap while Bruno and I prepared our usual breakfast; eggs and toast.

"Man, we need to get something else to eat."

"The only other food we can afford for breakfast is oatmeal."

"At least it's something different."

I nodded as I poured cheap coffee grinds into the dirty coffee maker, looked around at our broom closet of an apartment, and remembered that our inflated rent would be due soon. "We need jobs."

"Don't worry, that coaching job with the kids is starting this week."

"Will it be enough?"

"Probably not."

"Think I can sell my body to science yet?"

He laughed at me. "Science doesn't want your ugly ass body."

"Well then you're gonna have to start stripping or something cause we are running out of cash."

"Petey, one moment at a time. Let's see how this coaching thing pans out first. Besides, didn't you save up enough before moving here to get by the soccer season without a job?"

"I have enough to scrape by."

"Then don't worry about it yet. Scrape on, my friend, scrape on. It's the Harlem way."

I squeezed the last of our ketchup onto them. "Your turn to buy the ketchup."

"Your turn to buy the milk," he responded, pouring the last minuscule drop into his coffee. "Now, let's eat. And just eat, nothing else. Meals are sacred, let's not ruin it with our babel and our worries."

We ate and drank in that comfortable silence, and I felt more at peace. Maybe it was the comfort of the coffee, maybe it was the eggs. Who knows.

When we were done I was still hungry, but that hunger would go away soon if I drank enough water - a body-hack that Bruno had taught me.

I showered and went about cleaning my room, an attempt to bring some Order into my life. It was a short chore since there wasn't much to clean. Then got ready for school. Before leaving the door I pulled a beanie low over my head, double-checking in the bathroom mirror to make sure it covered my scar. The homeless Denzel was at the top of his stairs. He wasn't sleeping this time, and there was no bottle in his hands. He didn't seem to hear me coming, or if he did, he simply didn't care. He sat there staring down the avenue, lost in it as if he could see all the way down Manhattan. Maybe he wasn't lost, but searching. I watched him stare as I waited for the pedestrian light to come on, wondering what it was that he was searching for, and whether it was real or not, or whether it was in the present, or the past, or future. Was he looking for a friend? For a dream? For a memory? For a path out of this life? Whatever he was searching for, it was beyond the physical. It was something in the ether, something in the time space fabric of metaphysics, something either deep in the recesses of his mind, or far into the strings of possibility that are the future.

I left him behind to his as the bus brought me to campus and, being quite early for class, sat in the quad to read Hemingway under the shade of a tree. I read until my head started feeling woozy. The concussion was healing, but it was hard to gauge what my brain was capable of doing. I was terrified that it would never be the same, that I would forever have to limit my exposure to new information, put all of my effort into remembering simple things like names and words, avoid bright lights, and never have a good conversation or a whole thought again.

I laid in the grass with my backpack under my head and stared up at the leaves, longing for two weeks ago. I didn't appreciate my health and abilities enough then. I didn't appreciate my legs for being able to carry me at such great speeds or lift me into the air with a leap. I didn't respect my brain for its ability to learn and retain. It's like when you have a sinus infection and no matter how much you blow your nose the mucus and snot comes back. You are simply too congested to breathe, and your body is always tired, so you lie in bed breathing through your mouth wanting for nothing more than to sleep and to breathe through your nose. You realize you've taken your immune system for granted, and that all of those days of breathing through your nose were better than you knew. But you know that you'll get over a sinus infection because you've had them before, and will have them again, and in most cases it won't affect the grand scheme of your life. A head injury seemed so... definite.