Adele
Adele, my dear, it’s been 2 years since I slept on your couch when I was in LA for Jenn’s wedding. I haven’t seen you since then, and I think we both agree it’s been too long. Let me start by saying just how dumb I feel for how distant I was, the last time I saw you here in the city. It’s just that things had been going so wrong for so long and I couldn’t tell you.
Allison took me in until I was myself again. I never figured the right way to pay her back… so I never did. Some things are too big to make light of with words or small gestures. Things are better now. So much better now. I can’t quite keep a band together. But my music’s getting a lot better. I’ve got a job and a place of my own in Crown Heights. It’s alright.
I spent a summer in Ditmas Park, where I learned to slow my head and heart down to a normal speed, slow enough to know there was a rhythm, and every weekend I’d ride down to Jacob Riis to take pills. I spent a winter on Maiden Lane, and fell in love with silence again. Late at night I’d walk for hours without seeing a soul. I saw the harbor grow large to quiet all the lights and noise for 5 days.
Things are better now, so much better now. Everyone I know is pairing off, but y’know I love weddings, so that’s OK. I’m still not sure I’ve ever really been in love, but maybe soon … and I’d love to move to LA, but things have just started to get OK again back here in New York … and I’m afraid. Failure is such a real thing, and such an easy thing to fall into.
Adele, my dear, you should come here and we could go out and spend the day at the beach … and none of this cattle-call-mass-email bullshit … I’m not myself in groups, and I don’t hear so well in loud bars. Sometimes I forget that you got engaged. I really love getting dressed up, it makes me feel old, in a good way, like I’m an adult who raises plants and cooks his own food. Adele, my dear, why don’t you come here and we could go home, we could go home to Bergen. I could talk about the things that I did wrong, and you could roll your eyes.
The wonderful thing about you is you never knew just how afraid you should be. But that’s not me. But maybe. Maybe it could be.