40
NICO A M A DOR
Sunshine Park Week before last, I looked at the boyfriend I had and said, don’t plan the rest of your life around this. The boyfriend I wanted said the same to me. I traded out my apartment for a smaller one, for fewer possessions, less talk. It was absolution in the non-religious sense. Without attachment, I claim nothing, owe nothing. I’d dreamt the snowy streets we’d made between each other and now I turn and let illusion vanish in their dusky margins like an unleashed dog. I let it go so I could know myself in its absence. The truckers, the slow busses and I take the same stretch past the Holiday Inn, the Big Y and around a screwy curve at the town center. A shabby corner promises nothing but a view above the river’s high-walled flood chute, a place to stand and watch the ice swim, more and more passing by the glittering minute. And look, if I refused to see clearly, if I went too long believing one thing was another, it wasn’t ignorance but habit, a way I once applied myself
