The city was New York.
The time was 9:35 pm.
One could not see the sun.
The season was spring.
The temperature was 50°F.
It was raining.
The time was 9:35 pm.
One could not see the sun.
The season was spring.
The temperature was 50°F.
It was raining.
Apology
Allyson Paty
A body as it falls down a staircase
is a theory of event
is a theory of event
unspooled & calcified
from cause, its unrelenting.
It was a Thursday. You were home. The subway
platform came into view. I was walking
& then I wasn’t. I thought
this is happening.
It was just like that,
the moment of falling begun with a sentence,
then the moment given—
light, cement, tucked head
in arpeggio.
I stood up. The policeman saying ma’am.
There’s nothing dire in this story. What I wanted
is to tell you
how in the moment where falling
& my knowledge of falling began
I felt my self in a formal sense—
a pattern of snowfall, a texture
set to accumulate
on a many-textured ground. Counter to this
ran the inward feeling that as I fell
I pulled inside of me the cement & scored metal
yellow paint & trains flanking the platform
the dirt I picked from my hair—
when a bystander gasped it was violation
of what I alone contained.
The policeman said ma’am,
I just watched you fall down the stairs.
The policeman said ma’am,
I just watched you fall down the stairs.
It wasn’t clear what this meant.
I said thank you.
As the cars filled, the faces
not grotesque, not alluring
as they were in some moods.
I thought how banal
to be a person, the likes,
dislikes, the narrative facts
one wears like a coat of arms.
As a teenager, I nursed a terror I’d become
a crumpled thing
at the foot of a man’s life.
As if this would happen out of no cause
no moment where falling & knowledge
of falling began.
No carelessness in you, & still I could not
open my life into a field
around you, my I
a temperature, a hue.
a temperature, a hue.