The Indicator x The Student: “from LaGuardia, with love (after Hanif Abdurraqib)”

i taught her to carry 

a glass of water in one hand

and a blade in the other,

to call the tremor between them

affection.

but she turned to me, yesterday morning

& asked, with sour lemons

in her mouth:

what kind of psychopath

places life and death

so close together—

and still calls it home?

now i dream of nights i can’t quite place—

sweet static, low murmurs that i hold but can’t

unravel. 

the skin remembers more than our 

mind permits. aching ribs are proof the heart

keeps trying. would it just

once stop hammering, be

quiet in its unrest, an untethered

flutter below the bone—an

echo too faint to be unspectacular,

too human not to call it a thing.

i clouded her vision 

with headstones,

stacked like skylines,

a city of graves

lit against the neon light.

maybe—

maybe what saves us from

the edge—isn’t glory, but a funeral

we keep delaying with breath.