She stood in the shadow of a monolith, all of her potential looming over her, and she watched her dreams deliquesce into flickering shadows and murmurs. Her feet would never touch the stage of Lincoln Center, she would never see her name in The New Yorker. The future had rushed past her, leaving her behind, bloodied leg in the road. She was ghosting on an LED screen, a shadow of the past chasing the future.

We step out from St. Marks Church, a balloon animal pops, a child shrieks.

“How was it,” she asks. You were perfect, I say, it was great. I’ll relive this moment again and again. She grips my arm tighter. I’m not sure where we’re walking, but we’re moving east, towards the river.

Do you remember those opening bands, I ask her, when we went to Coney Island?

We walk along the East River, lights casting down from the Williamsburg Bridge, skittering across the dark ripples. We pause at a bench so she can rest her leg. She massages her shin and I see the raised purple scar beneath her jeans in my head.

When I was eight I built a four foot tall Lego replica of the North Tower, cementing each plastic brick in place with a mortar of Gorilla Glue, terrified that a careless limb would knock the whole thing down and spill the dream of it across the floor.

 

****

 

I adjusted my grip to a new spot on the subway beam, fingers seeking the cold side of the metallic pillow. I watched the carousel of lights, sickly green and fluorescent orange whir past the window. Watched the doors rattle in their place, remembered to mind the gap. I looked at Arianna and followed her long limbs to the dried-gum-and-piss floors. Her olive-skin was made a patchwork of the green and orange light that trickled inconsistently into the car as we flew past the fields of girders. Her arm muscles tensed as she clutched her duffle bag, lean strips of trained fibers. Her body was functional, her posture effortless, precise. I liked to watch her stretch before and after her shows, uncoiling the tension in her limbs, preparing them to move in ways that laughed at gravity and conformity and then cooing them like a mother after the fact.

I felt unnatural in my seat as I watched her on the stage. Lazy limbs sinking into the cushions and falling at my sides, heavy and useless, pendulums laid to rest without a fulcrum to swing their great swoops from. These silent beasts are hard to bear.