went to my best friend's 30th birthday yesterday. took a long train ride out to long island, to this gorgeous harbor restaurant.

live jazz and expensive lights in the air, we were there, loved ones amassing one by one, close friends and family. we came together for her birthdays from college days through the twenty-somethings, then for the bridal festivities a few years ago, and then for every subsequent birthday and celebration.

she arrived, as lovely as ever, with her baby and her husband, and i was struck by how little she changed, but also how much her life changed, all in good ways.

my brother became a father just a few months before my best friend became a mother; their babies are only two months apart, and it's so strange to me, that these people i know and love, are now taking care of these little beings, who look like tiny extensions of the people i love. of course, they do have their own personalities.

lina's baby is a joy. pictures on the internet are one thing, but in real life, you realize how much the child laughs even though she's only 4 months old and only just learned to hold her own head up. she has expressive eyes, curiosity, and a joyful personality. she watches all the strangers and finds them novel and pretty. she smiles a lot and tries to eat their fingers.

lina and her husband sit with us at the friends table, and we all banter and brunch and drink, but mostly we watch our favorite people be parents and partners.

the baby is hungry, so lina gets up, but we all insist that her baby not eat in the bathroom, but really, also because my best friend should not have to feed her baby in isolation, away from all of us, in a lonely bathroom, however nice it is. she covers up with a light blanket with her husband's help, and feeds her baby with some slight embarrassment because she's never done this before with an audience, so her husband buries her in more baby blankets, like an old babushka.

we all laugh and take pictures. her husband gives a touching speech about her while she is mid-feeding their child, and she roasts him in interjections, and we all laugh and toast because they are ridiculous, and because they have a happy family, but also because all of us in this room, are their family.

we all have a lovely afternoon and wander around and take pictures, and give so much attention to the baby, and talk to people we like and have known for a very long time, and we don't talk about the things that don't matter (the things that you save for strangers when you have to explain who you are and make a good impression), because these people already like you and know who you are already.

when the party ends, i decline car rides from everyone, blaming it on carsickness, but really, because i wanted to take a train ride back alone. we all say goodbyes and everyone leaves, until it's just ella, lina & eddie, and us, their two best friends. we help them to their car and say goodbye.

eddie's best friend drives me to the train station and we talk a little, mostly about old hobbies, and how jobs consume us, and how lina and eddie were smart to get married when they did, so now they can have their family. we arrive at the train station, and i thank him for the ride, and leave, and wait for my train.

on the ride home, i go through all the pictures taken, and it surprises me a little how happy i am to see how happy and beautiful my best friend is, and how beautiful and happy her child is. i think that my best friend is a good mother, on top of all other things, and i think about how it was so obvious that she was always going to be a good mother. my phone battery dies, and i fall asleep.

i wake up when the train is finally back in the city, and make my way home.

i think about happiness, and how it is real, and how my best friend grew this life from what she had, and i think about how lucky i am to be part of her life, even though we don't see each other often.

i think about other things, like work, and failed relationships, and the pursuit of careers and dreams, but mostly, as i curl up in bed, i think about how success might not be everything after all.

i think about the things i love, and the things i like, and i think about how there's all this thinking to do now.

being alone is playing spotify in your room on a friday night while rocking an ebbing fever and the single vodka-water in an aquamarine martini glass close to midnight, and your feelings are somewhere between fuzzy bluegrass breakup songs and rowdy gypsy jazz with a splash of punk.

the guilt, but mostly the metabolization of the night keeps me awake. rain, and soft, wet air, patters on the windowsill & street accompany me.

i carve through the porky dead flesh of recent memory with a scalpel in my mind, looking for a granule of something; clasp a closed hand to my left breast, find a crumpled love note that i want to unfold and flatten on my chest, so i do.

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over work drinks, i tell my colleagues that my best friend is getting married this weekend, and the cheeky one accuses me of being Julia Roberts in some film, secretly in love with my best friend, so i roll my eyes, because cheeky co-workers are like drunk people playing darts at a bar together, and you know how films like that go, if you keep watching.

all the ducks lined up behind a glass window. chickens too. poultry roasted with soy, and they all hang in the windows. as a child, my father would buy a bird, all chopped up, in these elegant horizontal pieces, to add to the dinner my mother prepared. sometimes he would buy a bird, especially when he was feeling guilty, but thought he could get away with whatever it was, because look, he bore a gift.

these birds were delicious. 

after a while, he'd buy the bird, but then leave right after dinner to do whatever it was that he wanted, that he was making a small penance for, with a bird. then he started leaving before dinner was over. then, he started just buying the bird, and leaving, after he made the trip home to deliver it to our table. 

and then my mother got sick, so our parents just asked us to go buy a bird ourselves for dinner, from the local place.

today, i watched a woman standing in the corner of the train. she was old. her hair was badly dyed. she stood in the corner, with her bags around her sneaker covered feet. she had a white plastic take out container in her hand, full of bird, and she ate from it, like it was a plate, like she was hungry the way a child is hungry when eating dinner late at night, unwatched and ignored, and left to his solitary devices to eat. and she ate. she was a gaunt woman. and she liked her food. it tasted good, slipped from the corner of her little rectangle container. she slipped the pieces into her mouth, and chewed, and pulled the little bird bones from her mouth, and cupped them as she ate.

the trains door opened. some more strangers got on, so she stopped eating, and put away her food. then i had nothing else to watch.

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i did a lot of waiting. things don't come. the train does, sometimes.

tired here, and tired there. whiskey is not my friend, it's just a drink poured on ice to have.

more sure every day as the sun comes up and the shower water runs hot and down the mildewing drain. is the heat on? the heat is on, but i don't need it. towels are just fine. i was asking for help in the little ways, but i think love and futures were the questions someone else was asking. we speak in different tongues, and i'd like to know how to carve mine out to make something that will find me something pretty to my heart.

i could sell pages. i could sell color on paper, and mood on paper, and ideas that jar and make you laugh because of your willingness to laugh, like a toll fare paid at a gate that you need to drive through to get to the places you have to be.

i have red in a bottle. i have white too; these color demarcations that do not capture the color, rosy like a post sunset of a storm night put on rare hold, and dew on aging straw. i think of dying. i think of death. i think of how little unrequited love moments break me, but you held me so sweetly, and i don't know if it's enough or not, to apply emotional credit for things i don't know if i have. i can't afford it, and i don't want you paying for things you don't want to pay for.

red in a glass. red in my mouth. i kissed you as real as i could with all the things i had in me, and i wanted you to know that i did, that i loved you, but i didn't know what else there was for me to try to say with my imperfect mouth. my secrets are worthless. i have nothing. the only thing i'm holding onto, is that glance, which is as sweet as all the glances i've ever wanted, and it's all that i've got to go on.