Texas

Cleaning the dust bunnies from under our lives, Zin says she wants to move to the country, maybe someplace as big as Texas. She claims that lately she's having trouble breathing between bricks or talking to hot chestnut vendors with rubber faces. It's giving her nightmares of beehive tombs, the subway system as a mastaba, too tight a fit for her. Early evening, we're walking down Bleecker, Zin in one of her bipolar phases, talking as if she's about to meet Jackson Pollack giving her his impression of space. I tell Zin that I'm staying in the city, that Texas is too small a space to milk my musical urban cows. Before I can say I take that back, Zin falls through a manhole and I'm left patching a hole in the sky before it rains Noah's favorite plastic animals and Zin is swept away without paying one city token for fare. From under the streets, I can hear the melody of Zin's voice and I suppose this is her way of guiding me to a place where it rains infrequently, a place where I can breathe dry dust, a place like Texas.