Cupio Dissolvi
Missed Connections in Brooklyn
The fucking eggs florentine in the take-out bag dissembled along with her 23 chromosomes. Tremors, a flushed feeling in Y’s cheeks. A paralysis of sorts; an apparition inducing momentary asphyxiation, or threatening plausible death.
She’d always imagine fight: an adult version of herself would say coolly, “X… how have you been?” This was flight: though the thought of hurling herself onto the 3rd rail was quickly disregarded, it sounded painful, messy, and even more narcissistic than she thought she was capable. Like a bee in a jar.
She nearly laughed there on the periwinkle subway bench, and probably would have, had she the ability to move her face. It was all absurd. She didn’t look up from the book she had finished an hour earlier, until she stood up to leave the train at Halsey, X had already gone.
Now seeing him, she felt it was inopportune. Yet equally, it fit right in with the events of her day. She woke early, then went for a late breakfast and coffee at a quiet restaurant, where she found it a perfect place to write. Something she had decided she was going to do for the rest of her life–write–that is. Her sister sent her images of them as children, she laughed and everything had this nostalgic feeling smothered all over it. She thought of getting her nails done, although she wasn’t one for manicures. So she decided to go back to her loft in Bushwick, and write some more.
Phenomenology. Collective consciousness. Bouts of events that appear to have some meaning. Connectedness. She thought of all this in her dizzy state, and she thought about this person. Had they stayed together, how it would have been, and who they still might be.
Her Two Cents
I’ve been finding more and more short stories or snippets of stories or narrative style poems on missed connections – and it’s pretty exciting and mysterious. Take this piece from Brooklyn; it kind of reads like a quasi-sci-fi / dystopian romance but the segment is so brief that you’re left with more questions than answers. I rarely try to contact these anonymous writers (as most of the times the posts have expired, been flagged, or deleted) but curiosity is starting to get the better of me…
