I’m Amanda. I’ve got wide eyes, a smart mouth, and a MetroCard. And I’m not afraid to use them.
I really enjoy the Counting Crows song “Long December.” It smells like apple cider, old leather, and salt water. It feels like the sting of wind on your face. And it sounds like a night-time conversation between two exhausted people on a long drive home.
If recollecting were forgetting,
Then I remember not;
And if forgetting, recollecting,
How near I had forgot!
And if to miss were merry,
And if to mourn were gay,
How very blithe the fingers
That gathered these to-day!
I want to remember how hard
you were crying the day I left -
it surprised me.
I’d always thought of you
as so composed with your
happy go lucky nature
tinged with some jealousy,
resentment of me.
Should I share
the all of me,
the truth pouring
out like river water,
murky and unfiltered?
If I reveal my impurities,
promise you will still
try to soak in me,
what I am,
what you thought I was,
my solution
that is wrong and right.
“The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.”
- Robert Frost
Today I read What Narcissism Means to Me by Tony Hoagland. Here’s a poem called “A Color of the Sky”:
I remember once when I had first met Sam and my life was exploding into something bigger than I had ever experienced, I was crossing University Avenue on the corner where Kinsolving is. It was dark - I don’t remember where I was going - and the streetlights cast just the right amount and angles of illumination on me that I had two shadows for the first time. My one shadow had grown up with me. I remember how excited I was when it finally had breasts in profile! The other shadow was new, a stranger I didn’t know I had inside, outside, or on top of me. I wondered if one shadow was the good Amanda, the other the evil Amanda. Which was me-er?
Happy anniversary to me! I’ve been in NYC all by myself for one week.
Do I feel completely at home here? No.
