the habit of being

It’s been one year and seven months since we met, and we’re sitting on a bench. We’re sitting on a strudy old bench whose green paint is chipping off onto the lumpy brick sidewalk where the pigeons wait for handouts. We’re sitting under a tree next to a handball court fenced in all the way up to the sky. We’re sitting in a drizzle of rain in a perfect breeze that smells like expensive perfume and flowers and pigeon shit and homeless men’s urine wafting up from the subway. We’re sitting on Spring Street.

He has my cheek in his hand and he’s trying to make up for four months of not kissing me and it stops drizzling and I make up for it with my tears. He says “I love you” and I say “I’m going to start crying” even though I’m already crying and his fingers are wet and he says “don’t.”

He gets down on his knees in front of me and the bench and he kisses my knee.

My ankle has dried blood on it - a long scab surrounded by a wash of brown from the bathwater when I cut myself shaving and it bled more than I thought it would. My blood stain matches the coffee stains on his raincoat and no one else is dirty but us. Everyone walking by has such pretty dogs. Everyone has such pretty shoes. Even the girls who are trying to dress grungy for style are so impossibly clean. The children all look like cherubs.