swan dive

"I've had a little bit to drink, and it's making me think that I can jump ship and swim, that the ocean will hold me, that there's got to be more than this boat I'm in." - Ani DiFranco

i once walked
Manhattan at night,
drinking gin and tonic
and watching foreign films,
thinking about the boat i was in.

i thought about it:

in a small cinema on East 11th.
in an abandoned cinema on 181st.
in a packed cinema at Union Square.

i thought about it so much
that it started to feel like a movie
and when i left i took that feeling with me.

i thought about it:

lazy in Interlochen.
waiting in Lawrence.
caffeinated in Lancaster.
in Philadelphia at midnight.
driving all night from Buffalo.
at a forgotten prison in Kansas.
hypnotized by the maize in Indiana.
mid-larceny in haunted New Albany.
half-drunken and crying in Benton Harbor.
at sunset on a dilapidated bridge in Louisville.
impatient and bored in downtown Wilmington.
making an offering on the bank of Lake Michigan.

i once walked
the beach at night,
talking to the ocean and
drinking summer nostalgias.

i thought about it:

she was right all along.