Heath and Cliffs

In an old lime-green notebook, scribbled diagonally in my own hand, I read a reference to Rimbaud in which I once found meaning.

"I wait gluttonously for God. I have been of an inferior race for ever and ever."

The scribble is in pencil and I toy with erasing it. It could be as though thoughts never were...

Then an ambulance speeds past my window and I look up at my reflection in the cold glass. I don't seem any older. I'm 22 and my shoelaces still untie when I walk too quickly. I still wonder about words like thither and happenstance. I still have questions about God.

I outline the quotation in pen and return the notebook to the bottom of reverie's heap.

When I was nearly eight, I dreamed of being Atlas. I kept a globe atop my dresser and lifted it with young abandon. A chiropractor's dream. And with each year its weight increased while my abandon faltered. And with each year my shoulders shook and balance turned to bitter. And now, uncertainty.

A man on Columbus stopped to ask me why the words Hashem and Hashish barely differ. I didn't know. The man had been holding his cellphone to his left ear, pursing his lips as he spoke, and I shook my head in reply to the anonymous caller on the other end. He seemed disappointed.

I wonder if I believe in God or if I just believe in 'Jewish'.

My email has been inundated with horoscopes lately. I don't subscribe. The subjects read "I'm sorry for your sadness" and "How to care less and learn to live". I'm deleting them one by one to remind me that I don't wish to change.

Instead, I wear stilettos to mask the fear that I may be falling from this wuthering height.