Sometimes just the process of logging in makes me forget what I wanted to say in the first place. I used to be asking questions in emails and now I just tell things. Outside my window a building is paused mid-height in its construction. If I leave the bathroom door open I can see small men in hard hats edging the ledge, working, mornings. They are small because it is far off and I only know they are working because the building grows, slowly, over time. They are home now, watching TV or fighting with their families. Those were the first things that came to mind. Having brunch while their work clothes are in the wash.

I read last night with the NYU emerging writer series at KGB bar. Today, I told Jonny over sandwiches at this place Salty--that I both love for their sandwiches and hate for their aggressively uncomfortable seating, which is stools with tiny square seats and no place to put your feet if you are under 5'8, like us--that it was one of my favorite readings and one of my favorite days. The readers were invited to have dinner with Nick Flynn, who seems like a genuinely kind person. If I hadn't been mildly sick with nerves about reading and sitting directly to Nick Flynn's left while I ate rigatoni, I think I would have offered myself as a more compelling dinner companion. He spoke to me though, asked questions, which is what you have to do when the person next to you is not speaking. He showed photos on his phone of scenes from the film of Another Bullshit Night in Suck City. I should have told him how much my students loved Some Ether. The best poems they wrote they wrote after that. He said the bar was like the inside of someone's heart, someone's dark heart.

Reading to a roomful of people is magic because it's not reading your own sentences out loud to yourself with the windows open, over and over, with the cat napping behind you and the TV on low. I kept thinking, this would only be hard as improv, but everything I'm saying is right there. After, ate 100 dollars worth of yakitori at a place on St. Mark's with four other people. The beef heart was my favorite. I'm so proud of you, my sister said.