The story taking shape in front of me left much to be desired. To put it more than gently, the story was horrible. I had no idea what I was writing anymore. The things I wanted to say refused to leave my fingers the way I had fixed them in my mind. I watched my crossed fingers fold together above my head and felt the pull in the base of my neck as I stretched the tension in my arms, the drawback to writing hunched over my makeshift desk which consisted of a three hundred dollar textbook, a shoebox, and a broken purple clipboard. My knees and hips ached from sitting cross legged on the bed, a position I thoroughly enjoy the idea of, but rarely participate in due to the gangly length of my legs. I am honestly convinced they just aren’t meant to bend that way. I slowly slid from my sitting position down underneath the fluff of the comforter, tucking it up to my chin and assuming my customary fetal position, my hands balled into neat little fists and tucked under my chin. The light from the window to my right so dimly lit my relatively unfurnished studio apartment that for a moment I was unsure if it was early morning or late evening. It didn’t take long to remember that it was morning because missing you hurt the most at that time of day. It started with chest aches in the hours just before dawn. I would awaken at three, four or five am, grasping at my chest and gasping for air. It felt like, I imagine, having a heart attack and drowning. If I had to die by one, I would never pick the drowning in sorrow option, because I work so hard to stay above water in life in general. This gasping for air at the crack of dawn only served as a reminder that I can’t swim. You told me this once, that you felt like this. I remember.

My bed rests inches above the grungy cement floor in the middle of my one room apartment. Were it not for the good graces of my parents the mattress would sit directly on the floor. As it were, I resided in the thick, black comforter, relishing my island of luxury from which, to continue the water metaphors, I rarely attempted to swim ashore. From this post on Sedentary Island I wrote incessantly, these stories that would never be read, these messages for bottles that would never be sent. It should be obvious that in many other aspects of my life, like dusting, grocery shopping, communicating, and wearing clothes that were free of any elastic, I was floundering- for a girl that truly cannot swim, I have a strange affinity for water metaphors. Maybe it is a deep seated desire for danger. Or maybe I am just unconsciously realizing that I am more than capable of dying in a situation where many others can survive.

Just six months prior to this very unpleasant morning I was happy and hardworking college kid. I’m sure my parents miss that version of me, the overachieving trophy child that left on a scholarship to NYU to do...something. That must have always bothered them, me not knowing what I was doing, though I received so many, “you will figure it out when you get there” and “college is for finding these things out”, I knew it must have concerned them more than a little. I applied to five different schools and selected a different major and secondary major for each one, forcing me to draw up a chart the summer before my freshman year of what schools had accepted me, the scholarships they offered, and the major that they had accepted me for with an asterisk at the corner of each one. And very small at the bottom of my chart I drew the complementary asterisk, “*Research how easy it is to change majors.” I was preparing for my lack of preparedness. Therefore, the fact that my indecisiveness led to this living purgatory was probably of no concern: everyone including me should have known it was going to happen. Spinning my wheels in a rut is something I have always known how to do and do well. I blame it on my need for structure as a child. I have always had a quick mind but sometimes I just couldn’t think my way out of a paper bag. It was too much, too much thinking, too much emotion and sensation, and I just shut down. I think all of us, my family and I, became more optimistic when I started dating you, though. I was functioning, I was making it and life was good, and then you ended it. I don’t know if I can forgive you for that, but I’m trying. This writing already feels a little therapeutic. Maybe if I do finally forgive you I can get a good night’s sleep.

The late morning is not much better for me. I am overly critical in the mornings, and in reality I am not as agoraphobic or socially inept as I seem to be. I had not been kicked out of or quit college. Yet. I had a few friends that I visited from time to time in their quaint dorm rooms and their modern glass and chrome apartments, and they visited me on occasion in my cement box of a home that lacked any semblance of furniture. I am supposed to go visit one of those friends today, I remembered with my head under the covers, aggressively attempting to put myself to sleep. We were supposed to catch up over ethnic food of her choosing because she had been away on an internship in China. One would think she had had enough ethnic food, but I imagine getting good Jamaican food there may have been rather difficult, and she had always had a taste for the exotic. I had been dreading this for weeks, and remembering this early in the morning made it no more pleasant. It’s not that I didn’t like her, Winter, she is, and was, wonderful really, which is why every time I meet her I feel guilty. My mind had latched on the idea that I did not want to think about Winter or you being gone and so for the next two hours I lay in bed thinking about it. All brains are assholes. I gave up on the idea of sleep and rolled off of my island onto the floor, army crawling my way between familiar stacks of books. I never did like the idea of bookshelves, I always found them cage-like and inhumane,  which is ironic because they are now free in my cage of an apartment and are in turn, fencing me in, in a way I find not only thoroughly humane but desirable. I am not above being deep and poetic. I made my way to the dingy gray curtains and slid them apart, before shimmying open the dirty window. I spent a brief second sitting on my window sill watching cabs roll by and vaguely contemplating the wonders of spring before remembering that I was wearing only polka dot panties and a t-shirt and diving away from the view and into the bathroom. I could still hear the curtains behind me whispering “Winter, Jamie, Winter, Jamie” ad nauseum so I drowned out the sound with running water and sat on the edge of the tub admiring the dark circles under my eyes. Maybe I am as pathetic as I make myself out to be, I think as I prop my feet up on the toilet from my perch. The bathroom is so tiny that the tub, toilet, and sink are all accessible at the same time: I can sit on the toilet, wash my hands, and soak my feet in the tub simultaneously. Or more often you, Jamie, could lay miserably in the dry tub while dry heaving in the toilet and still be able to splash cold water on your face from the sink. At memories like these I was sometimes ashamed of the effort I had put in trying to keep us together, in trying to keep you together. I looked at the faded and peeling yellow wallpaper and wondered why I wanted you back so badly at all, but instead of getting unnecessarily existential, I peeled off the Black Keys concert shirt I had been wearing for a few days now, and the polka dot underwear I had exposed to all of New York, and slid into the warm, forgiving waters of the chipped white bathtub.

~

Born anew from the bathtub and wrapped in a threadbare towel I felt like less of a fuck up. I slid my feet across the stained cement to the “kitchen.” In the two years that I have made this space my home, no one had ever referred to the area cordoned off with a folding screen I found at Goodwill a “kitchen.” It contained a sink, four major appliances: a microwave, a hot plate for the few things that could not be microwaved, a fridge, and a toaster, and a single cupboard for dishes- dishes being six sundry forks, two sharp knives, two butter knives, four spoons, a stack of ever diminishing paper plates and ten coffee mugs. I have quite a fondness for mugs and use them as both drink receptacles and bowls. My mother had been to visit once nearly two years ago, a few months after I had moved in, and, as a born and bred southern home cook, she held such disdain for the So Called Kitchen that I kept it stocked this way just to spite her, even though I knew the next time she came to see it would likely be to help me move out and back home. My father had elected not to come on that trip, probably because there was no way to not see my mother if he came. They weren’t divorced, just passive-aggressively separated, living in the same house but on different planets. I thought about calling them as I rummaged through the freezer for breakfast food. I considered it further as I pulled out a box of corn dogs that were only slightly freezer burnt and remembered that I needed to buy groceries, and buying groceries required money. I saved the thought for later; storing it in the section of my brain I labelled The Functioning Adult List or FAL for short. As I took in my legs, long and thin, jutting from under the hem of my blue towel, I realized I needed clothing to cover them, as if it were some sort of grand epiphany. I added Do Laundry to the FAL. The microwave hummed to a stop behind me and I retrieved my corn dog, taking it to eat cross-legged on my bed due to my lack of kitchen furniture. It was a little hard in spots and tasted distinctly of freezer.

I keep my clothes on a single rack next to the single window, almost like what you would find at an upscale department store if not for the maze of books and general untidiness surrounding it on all sides. I slipped out of the towel and took in the slim pickings of clean clothes hanging on the rack. I tugged on a slimming pair of black pants. Not that I needed to be slimmed, I could see my hips protrude slightly over the low rise waist of my pants. I was guiltily pleased with the sight. I didn’t take extreme measures to maintain my size, I didn’t attempt to maintain my size at all, but there is something terribly pleasing about skipping a meal; it feels like an accomplishment to deny personal pleasures, even if they are bodily necessities. Disgusted by my body image issues, I averted my eyes from the mirror and back to my clothes to pick a shirt. I pulled gently on a red sleeve and immediately dropped it as if it had burnt the tips of my fingers. I couldn’t wear that shirt; I could never wear that shirt again. You had the matching one, Jamie. I remember when you bought them “as a gag” you had said sheepishly, but seemed pleased when I feigned excitement. We never wore them at the same time or in the same place, but the shock of familiarity when we saw each other wearing the shared shirt was always a lovely feeling. How pathetic it is to wear a shirt that is one in a pair and not have the pair there with you. To avoid both a fashion faux pas and my second emotional breakdown of the day before noon, I decided on a loose black V-neck, and enlivened by this burst of activity, picked up my bag and left to run errands. “Errands, can you believe it,” I imagined telling my mother over the phone, later that day, if I ever got around to calling her, “I woke up at four this morning and left at six to run errands!” Ignoring the odd times, my mother would burst into tears at sound of me growing up and yell for my father for the first time in five years. This scene alone propelled me out of the apartment and down the four flights of steps to the city streets, where, purely out of optimism and belief in my future and definitely not due to my dependency on my parents for money, I decided to walk the six blocks to the little independent bookstore. This was not technically an errand, but I had hours before I was scheduled to meet Winter, and I needed a little bit of happiness before her adventures in the world of adulthood made me like a very large child. Bitter, I was always so bitter.

“Welcome to- oh, hey!”

I grinned at Bell from the scuffed wood floor as he hovered above me on a ladder in the stacks. There was some story behind his moniker- his real name was Michael Stanton- but I had no idea what it was, so for the past two years since I had lived nearby and had made his acquaintance, he had been Bell. He slid down the ladder fireman-style, a stunt the owner, a sweet older lady named Rose, had always admonished him about. But Rose was around less and less, so more and more Bell was on his own. The untrained eye wouldn’t notice, but I was no Rose’s Book Emporium novice, and I could see the little touches of Bell around the store. For one, the literal bell on the counter; Rose had always been on the front desk, ringing people up, welcoming people in, “chewing the cud”, but Bell’s first love had always been the stacks, therefore, he needed the bell to be efficiently located. There was no bell or greeting necessary for me however. As an Emporium regular, I was the only customer to bear the prestige of being Rose’s Favorite Customer, a feat equaled only by Bell’s own distinction: Rose’s Favorite Worker. Much less impressive being that he was the only employee. Now standing in front of me, he grinned his usual wide grin that tilted slightly to the left, showing off his slightly crooked canines, and high cheekbones spattered with dark freckles like a robin’s egg.

“Whatcha writing?” It was how we always greeted each other, me a compulsive message in a bottle writer, he an English major at NYU, two years behind me.

“Oh, ya know, a new thing. About a girl who knows things.”

I am renowned for my eloquence.

“Isn’t that all girls,” he questioned honestly, “They all seem to know more than me, that’s for sure.”

He blew out a deep sigh, combing his salt and pepper curls back with his fingers. I had never asked, I was raised much too well for that, but on our first introduction I had been freely and cheerfully told that all the men in his family grayed early and he thought it made him look more mature, which was true when it was cut short, rather than the long mop of boyish curls that it usually was. Rose said those curls were the only reason she kept him around, but she was kidding of course. She needed him more than she was willing to admit.

“Always the girl problems,” I laughed over my shoulder. I had squatted in front of a crate to inspect a new selection of poetry books Rose had ordered a few weeks prior. She had the best taste of any bookseller in any genre, but for this particular selection she had asked my opinion, and I was overjoyed to see she had taken a few of my suggestions. “Maybe if you weren’t such an Adonis among men.”

“Ha! Very funny,” Bell responded sarcastically, but he smiled again, and offered a strong, veined hand to help me up, “but as you can see I have been working out.” He struck a body-builder pose, lifting his arms and pointing to the right while tilting his head toward the sky, his skinny frame flexing slightly. He has grown in the two years that I’ve known him, I mentally conceded, A little bit broader in the shoulders maybe…

“Yeah, yeah, Adonis, I got it. Isn’t there a car you should be lifting off a child somewhere?”

“Unh, unh, unh,” he wagged his finger, “That was quite the mixed metaphor. Am I Adonis or a superhero?”

“Hmmmm,” I squinted, purposefully overacting, “neither. You are Bell and you are annoying.”

He inspected the array of books I had selected, all mostly self-help.

"Life changes?"

"Just hush and check me out."

He blushed shyly at the double entendre, as he hoisted his lower body on to the tile countertop before sliding around to stand behind the register. He honestly couldn’t help it; I had known him long enough to know he couldn’t. If he were a superhero, women would be his kryptonite, but I guess a lot of people have that problem, huh Jamie? I was obviously yours. His gaze drifted over my body but it didn’t concern me, I doubted he was truly interested in me and rarely did our interactions trend toward the sexual. Of course consent is a necessity, but I was never one to be prudish or restrictive. When parties got raunchy after dark in junior high and high school, I became known for my calm ability to strip to my underwear when requested in Truth or Dare. In short, my mother had a hell of a time trying to explain to me why exactly private parts are private. Nonetheless, Bell’s cheek flushed when he saw me watching him with benign amusement, and his hands trembled slightly when he gave me a few dimes and a dollar bill in change.

“Now, now, Bell, you’re not all hot and bothered by the older girl next door with obvious emotional problems are you? Don’t tell me you’re into the manic pixie dream girl?” I gestured toward the self-help books I had lined up on the cool, light green countertop. How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and the classic I’m OK, You’re OK.

“Now why would I want to date another grandma? I’ve already got Rose.”

        I had sat my phone on the counter to shove the books into my bag and it was now clattering against it, vibrating continuously and obnoxiously. I quickly picked the phone up and silenced it, knowing without looking that I wasn’t ready to answer it, but Bell had already noticed.

        “Winter’s calling, huh?” He smiled. “That’s funny because it looks a lot like spring out.”

He chuckled at his own joke, oblivious to my pained expression. I looked over my shoulder, through the glass door with faded red and gold letters reading Rose's Book Emporium mirrored and in reverse. The streets were getting busier with people, cars, and buses going this way or that way all heading to work, few noticing that it really was a beautiful day outside, that the sky was clear ahead and that the smog seemed just the slightest bit less smoggy. Most looked down at their shoes, stepping almost fragilely on the dirty New York concrete. I couldn't blame them though: if I paid that much for my shoes I would be sure to get my money's worth of looking at them. The sun glinted off the windows of taller buildings and was absorbed into the bright colors of the awnings like some sort of laundry detergent commercial. I could almost smell the Tide in the air. There was no need to fear Winter when it was so obviously spring. I really do have a knack for the poetics. I absentmindedly gathered my books and waved a goodbye to Bell who was himself distracted by another customer who had come in after me, an older gent in a pinstripe three piece suit fitting tightly over his rotund frame, looking for a unique and rare book of recipes for his wife. You’ve come to the right place, I wanted to tell him. Rare, unique, and often unwanted, are Rose’s specialty.

On the sidewalk I discovered it was about half past seven when I checked my wristwatch for the time. It was a cheap little thing with a navy fabric band dotted with white that neatly contrasted my cinnamon colored skin. As a child my favorite soap had smelt strongly of lemons and my mother would tell me as she combed out the knots in my hair that with my cinnamon skin and lemony scent I was a bakers dream, a perfectly cooked confection. My stomach growled at the thought of cinnamon and lemons and I reached for my phone to locate the nearest bakery. I knew of a few, but all I ever bought from them were breads and cookies, and now I was definitely in the mood for a cupcake or something like it. Looking at my phone I realized it was Tuesday. I had mistakenly thought it was Monday, the one day of the week I didn't have classes at NYU, and therefore didn't even think about attending class, though it is doubtful I would have gone even if I had known. I was what they would call a super senior, twenty-two and in my fifth year at NYU, accomplishing next to nothing and living off my parents. Making decisions and moving on with my life was my personal kryptonite. It was going to stay that way unless I got a job or ever started attending classes and picked a major. How I had managed to make it five years without a career goal and still on scholarship was extremely impressive. The scholarship alone was no small feat.

        Purposefully avoiding the guilt from the date at the top of my phone, I walked two more blocks to the nearest bank and withdrew a modest amount of money. I added Find Job to my FAL. From that corner I hailed a cab to the bakery I had located on my phone where I found lemon frosted zucchini bread that was, sadly, probably the best thing to happen to me all week. Having successfully eaten away my guilt at essentially being a dropout and feeling much more like an adult for having withdrawn money, I decided to return Winter's call. Best case scenario was that she cancelled the entire get together because she was off being fantastic somewhere and there really was no worst case scenario, so while I still felt swell in the smoggy city I figured I might as well make the call.

"Percy!"

        Her voice was high and breathless like she had ran to answer the phone. Honestly, she probably had. I could see her in my mind, her blonde hair tied up with ribbons which somehow didn't make her look like a young child, as it did me, just vibrant and youthful. Her thin piano player fingers were gripping the phone in her left hand; her right hand was propped under her chin, even when she was standing. Her face was probably ecstatic, wide toothy grin and large dark eyes set in a heart shaped face. I sighed deeply and audibly at the sound of my nickname, accompanying it with an eye roll for dramatic effect even though I was acutely aware she couldn't see me and everyone walking past the bench I sat at could.

"Percy?"

I had taken longer than 10 seconds to respond and she was concerned I hadn't meant to call at all. I sighed again, louder and continuously, more a groan than a sigh really, until she got the message.

        "Ahh right, you're not Percy your Persephone."

"I am not Persephone," I said slowly, my mouth moving almost imperceptibly, and drawing out the syllables. I was matching her mocking and whining intonation, the same one she had used for all these years, “per seeeee fuh neeeeee.” In actuality, I was forcing my annoyance, I could never be mad at Winter. We had bonded as college roommates over our strange names. Persephone Annaleah and Winter Theodora: partners in crime. She clearly won the strange name competition, but unlike me she took her name in stride, doodling it happily in the margins of notebooks and the palms of horny college boys, whereas I copped out and only went by Annaleah. When I asked my mother what kind and how many drugs she had ingested to name her only daughter Persephone Annaleah Winsom, after the Queen of the Underworld, the weird goddess of vegetation that was kidnapped by the ever creepy Hades, she responded that she had worked especially hard to pick my name and she couldn't be happier with it. When I told her I could stand to be happier with it she only withdrew into herself, looking at me glassy eyed and silent. That interaction is the only reason I haven't had it legally changed, though when spring rolls around I have to admit I am secretly proud to be named after the person responsible, even if it is just Greek mythology. I had always wondered how my dad had ever let her name me that, he’s so uptight, and stoic and I can’t remember him being any other way. Regardless, only my parents, Winter, and you, Jamie, have ever called me Persephone, or some variation of it. And you’re not around to call me by it anymore.

        When I had ignored her call in the bookstore, she had been calling to tell me that she had found an apartment in West Village, financed by her fancy new job at Accenture, a major company in New York, where she would provide outsourcing services thanks to skills she had picked up on her fancy internship in China. Towards the end of the conversation I was actually convinced she had forgotten about our lunch date, but I had never been the type to get lucky.

        “So I was thinking… how about I just throw a party at the new place and we can catch up that way?”

        Yes, parties are wonderful ways to chat intimately with a friend, I thought.

        “Uhmmm…” I checked my watch even though I, again, knew she couldn’t see me.

        “And you can meet my boyfriend!”

I froze. While talking I had slowly drifted toward Central Park, further away from home, but it was the direction the crowd of people were moving and I followed. At that suggestion I stopped. Men in suits swarmed around me leaving morning breakfasts and brunches. Pretty, stay at home mothers and nannies pushing baby strollers glared as they swerved to avoid me. And there I stood gaping like a fish out of water, struggling to breathe because I remembered when it was me. When I had run to my dorm, still girlishly decorated in pastels and posters, when I grabbed Winter and sprawled on her bed, dying to tell her about how you had kissed me on a bench in Washington Square Park. I remembered how Winter was always, always single. She intimidated boys. Her name for one, Winter Theodora, struck fear into the hearts of men and rightly so. Our last year of dorming together, before I moved into my concrete box and before she left for China, we designed and created a typographic sign that had hung proudly for all to see and that I still kept propped behind my bed, never finding the time to hang it. It was a quote from Warsan Shire: “Give your daughters difficult names. Give your daughters names that command the full use of tongue. My name makes you want to tell me the truth. My name doesn’t allow me to trust anyone that cannot pronounce it right.” And now there she was trusting someone with this name, and I couldn’t handle her having a person like this, a person who could fit her name in his mouth and still love her, because I couldn’t handle not having you. You had wanted to love me this way. I had forced you to call me Annaleah.

“Percy? Perse- ANNALEAH.”

I gulped in air. The back of my eyes felt prickly with the beginnings of tears, and the pressure in my head told me those tears would be sobs and my heart told me to call you but instead I sucked in a deep breath.

“Yeah..sorry. I’ll, uh, I’ll be there. I’m sure he’s great.”

I took two more extremely deep breaths as if I’d just been released from a chokehold. You still had such a hold on me. I turned back in the direction of home.

It was twelve o’clock noon upon my return to the apartment. I had officially accomplished only one task, which was buying enough groceries to hold me over for at least two weeks longer, meaning I had just bought another box of corn dogs, a case of water, some pop tarts, and some Easy Mac. I regretted this, however, when I was forced to carry the case of water and two bags up to my fourth floor apartment, the elevator having been out of commission for quite some time. Once I made it inside I rewarded myself by climbing directly back into bed, clothes and all. I hadn’t even bothered to unpack the groceries, and the frozen corn dogs I bought were sure to melt as I am not a firm believer in air conditioning. I was always cold enough, but I guess you know that. Nonetheless, I had accomplished a task and I set about assembling my desk in front of me. Shoebox, textbook, clipboard. I slid the writings I had been working on from underneath my dingy pillow. It was the story I had told Bell about earlier, and I had no clue where it was going, but I knew even less about where my life was going so I took advantage of what I could control and set pencil to paper. I decided to improve on the beginning of the story a little.