One afternoon, I noticed a new tree in the courtyard. I was sitting on the balcony, smoking a cigarette and waiting for my laundry to finish, when it caught my eye. From above, it looked identical to the trees around it. But I was almost certain that this particular tree had not been there before. Every day, I went out on this balcony to smoke, and every day, I stared at the trees in the courtyard, so I had a pretty clear mental image. There were four concrete rings, each containing several trees, except for the one in the middle, which had only a small sapling. And now a big, mature tree had suddenly appeared in that center ring, casting its shadow over the weak little sapling.
Was it really possible to transplant a fully grown tree into the earth like that? I didn’t know a lot about nature, so I couldn’t say. Surely it would have made noise, though — assuming you need a whole construction crew to pull off something like that. Yet I had slept like a baby the night before, no interruptions at all, and I’m a light sleeper.
It was a warm summer day. Around the apartment block, I could see many people sitting out on their balconies. Old men sitting in the shade. Young women in tank tops and short shorts sitting in the sun. Some of them were smoking like me, some were reading books, most were just on their phones. I wondered whether anyone besides me had noticed the tree.
I stared into its foliage. The leaves shifted slightly as a breeze passed through the courtyard. It fit so perfectly into its surroundings; if I hadn’t known otherwise, I would have assumed that the layout had been designed with this tree in mind. And as a matter of fact, in the past I had consciously remarked to myself that it was weird for the middle ring to have only a sapling while the others had these big leafy giants. But that only made me more certain that my mental image was accurate. This tree had not been there until today.
My cigarette had burned down to the filter. I tossed it into the ashtray at my feet. I was about to light a new one when my alarm went off.
There was one person in the laundry room, a short Southeast-Asian guy that I had seen around the building a couple times. He had a distinctive fashion sense: colorful camp-collar shirts, linen pants, basketball shoes. He was perched on the window-sill, staring at his phone. He didn’t look up when I entered the room.
I filtered out the clothes that I was going to throw in the dryer and the clothes that I was going to hang-dry. The former category included socks, underwear, and T-shirts; the latter category included pants and button-down shirts. After filling up the dryer and starting the machine, I set a timer for an hour and twenty minutes on my phone. That was usually enough. I draped the more delicate clothes over my laundry basket and carried it into the elevator.
I love the smell of clean clothes. That’s why I do so much laundry. I probably do it three times as often as the average guy, and not because I care more about cleanliness. I just enjoy the ritual. The warmth of the socks when they come out of the machine. The careful folding and smoothing. Even the waiting period is important — I like being forced to sit around and do nothing while the machine runs. It gives me time to meditate.
In my bedroom, I separated the wet clothes. Flecks of lint had to be removed; the shirts were placed on hangers and buttoned up to minimize wrinkling. Then I hung everything up. I didn’t have a clothesline or a drying rack, so I just hung everything on the chandelier. I like this because it has the effect of partitioning the room into different sections.
Once the clothes had been hung, I sat down on my bed. A warm gust of wind came in through the window, rustling the curtains of cloth. I rubbed my cheek. That morning, I had achieved one of the most perfect shaves of my life. I had somehow sliced the hairs down to the tiniest follicles without cutting myself. Now my chin was eerily smooth, like there had never been hair there in the first place. It was simultaneously comfortable and uncomfortable to rub my fingers across the skin.
I got up and looked out the window. There was the tree, staring calmly back at me from its circular enclosure.
In order to solve the mystery, I needed a closer look.
I gathered my stuff and took the elevator all the way down to the bottom floor of the building. The trees were in an open-air chamber below ground level; you could only access it from the parking garage. I didn’t go down here very often. It was a nice enough space, with greenery and benches, but there was no reason for me to relax on these benches when I could relax on my own private balcony with a cigarette. I think most of the building’s residents thought the same way, because the space was usually empty. Despite all the children who presumably lived in this massive high-rise, I never saw or heard them playing down here.
I passed through the connecting hallway of the parking garage and came out into the sunlit courtyard. The trees seemed much bigger from this perspective, with long trunks and expansive canopies. I walked in and out of their shade and arrived at the concrete ring in the center. There was the little sapling, boasting only a handful of leaves on its slender limbs. And there was the mystery tree, towering over with quiet confidence. I don’t know much about botany, but this was definitely not a young tree. The thick trunk had many ridges; the limbs twisted about, splitting off into many smaller branches; and the base of the tree was planted firmly in the earth, showing no signs of recent upheaval.
I wanted an even closer look, so I jumped up onto the concrete platform and stepped out onto the tree pit. Crouching down, I pressed my hand to the dirt. It was dusty and compact, the opposite of what you’d expect if fresh earth had recently been transplanted here. I looked around at the other tree pits; the dirt had the same appearance. These tree pits had all been filled before I even moved into the building.
The sapling quivered when I pressed on its green stem. The base rose crookedly from the earth, making it even more shaky.
I stood up to touch the trunk of the big tree. The texture was surprisingly smooth. Almost as smooth as my freshly shaved chin. What had appeared to be ridges were in fact discolorations, dark spots streaking the surface like rain. The wood was cool to the touch.
With my hand still on the trunk, I squinted up into the canopy. A few feet above my head was the place where the two main limbs of the tree diverged. Above that, you couldn’t make heads or tails of the structure; the limbs spread into arteries of branches, each bearing its own foliage. Sunlight pierced through the clusters of thin, glossy leaves. Everything was still and peaceful.
Back in my room, I sat down at my desk and opened my laptop. I knew that I had to write about the tree. Something doesn’t drop into your lap like that for no reason.
Should I write about from the aerial view, I thought, or the view that I had gotten from up close? The aerial view was the way I initially saw it, and first impressions tend to be the strongest. At the same time, I felt a closer connection to the tree when I was actually surrounded by its greenery. Immersion is the more traditional way to write about nature. Then I thought, maybe it’s that very contrast I need to write about. The contrast between the two angles.
I considered how I might write about such a contrast. There was the image of the tree from above, a little green clump surrounded by other identical clumps, and then there was the tree as an environment that could totally surround you. But I wasn’t sure what the point of this contrast was. Is it really such a revolutionary concept that things look bigger up close? No, I was getting off-track. The reason that the tree was worth writing about was the fact that it had appeared all of a sudden. The mystery I had been trying to solve. That’s what I needed to write about.
I started typing:
A tree appeared in the courtyard. From my window, it looked like all the other trees. But it hadn’t been there the night before.
This was just description. I needed to find something poetic and beautiful about the situation. I deleted and tried again.
Something is wrong. A tree has entered this summer afternoon without permission. The necessary rites haven’t been pronounced. Roots haven’t had time to spread; water hasn’t been supplicated from the soil; leaves haven’t quivered into fullness.
I didn’t like the last part, where I started using fake words like “supplicated” and “fullness.” But there was something good here. The idea that the tree had done something wrong. Holding a tree accountable for its actions.
I started over:
I hate the tree that stands in the courtyard. He wasn’t invited, and if he were a man, he would have been turned away at the entrance, or asked to pay an extra fee. But because he is green, and tall enough to cast shade on the concrete, and sighs in the summer wind like the others, he’s been allowed in.
The trees have seen me mumbling to myself. They’ve seen me tired, and unshaven, and wearing clothes that don’t match. The trees in the courtyard have seen me drunk, stumbling back from your house, as the residual warmth of your embrace began to fade. And in all these nights — days and nights, but mostly nights — they never judged me.
But this tree is different. At night, when his green leaves have turned black, and moonlight rather than sunlight defines his shadow, and there’s no wind to fill the silence, I can feel him watching me.
Fiction had crept into the poem — I had never been tired or unshaven or drunk in the courtyard, as I didn’t spend time there at all. But that wasn’t necessarily a problem. If anything, it was a sign that my creativity was flowing. The pronoun “you” had also found its way into the poem, as it so often did: “stumbling back from your house.” I didn’t have a clear idea of who this “you” was, but whoever they were, they made frequent appearances in my writing.
I read it again. There were some surface-level changes that needed to be made. “There is no wind to fill the silence” was problematic because it conjured up the image of wind when I was trying to describe the absence of wind. I replaced it with “the courtyard is windless.”
Also, was “residual” the right word? A more poetic word would probably be “lingering.” “The lingering warmth of your embrace.” But that runs the risk of sounding less authentic. I kept it as “residual” for the time being.
It was getting warm in my room. I leaned over to the bookshelf to switch on the mini fan and angle it toward my body. A droning noise emerged from its openings. Cold air tousled my hair.
The poem was not finished; I could feel that the final beat was missing. I had essentially given a thesis and an argument for that thesis. The ending had to be something more.
I looked back down at the tree for inspiration, but at this point, I had looked at it too many times and it had lost its meaning. I could no longer remember the feeling of seeing the tree for the first time; it was now bound up with the direction that the poem had taken.
I took the boiler over to the bathroom sink and filled it up, turning off the water as soon as it reached the minimum fill line. At my desk, I placed the full boiler on the heating pad. The ethereal blue light came on. As I waited for the water to boil, I rummaged in my cupboard for a tea bag and placed it in my glass. Soon the water began to emit a humming noise, getting louder and louder until it erupted into an angry froth. The blue light switched off. Once it was calm again, I poured the sizzling water over the tea bag until the cup was dark red.
There probably needed to be a line break after what I had written. “I can feel him watching me” felt like an ending, but it couldn’t be the end of the whole poem, so it would have to be the end of the first section.
I pondered what the second section could be. The narrator finds beauty in the tree? He learns to accept it into the courtyard? No, that would betray the whole vibe that I had been creating. It’s a negative poem, it’s about hate. It can’t have a happy ending. But it needs to have some ending other than elaborating on the narrator’s hatred for the tree. An ending needs to take the reader someplace new.
When I felt like enough time had gone by, I removed the tea bag, threw it away and took the first sip. It was a good steep — not too watery, not too bitter. That full black richness that makes you feel heavy and light at the same time.
I opened up the Notes app on my computer. The folder titled “Miscellaneous” was where I kept my unfinished poems, all the bits and scraps that hadn’t found a home yet.
I perused the most recent scraps.
Wriggle through the gate like a worm in windfall. Tip over buckets of rain in the darkness. Unplug your ears. Hear the wind chimes. Unpinch your nose. Smell the watchdog.
There was a nice atmosphere to this one, but it had nothing to do with the poem about the tree. I kept scrolling.
The smoke in the lungs puts the hand on the clock. The keys in the lock put the sun in the ground. We slide about town like fish in a listing boat.
This one seemed like sketch for something else. I couldn’t remember what that something was.
The next one was longer:
When I’m waiting for you to call, time contains more time. The best way to think about it is not a point moving across a horizontal line; I prefer the image of a jacket with many pockets. I am searching for something, patting myself down from top to bottom. There are far more pockets than expected, not just the hip pockets and the breast pocket but all kinds of secret inner pockets sewn into the lining. And every time my hand reaches in, grasping for something solid, I find myself slipping into another pocket, a pocket-within-a-pocket. This is how it feels to wait for your call.
It struck me that this could be the second part of the poem I had been writing. I pasted it in, adjusting the font to match what I had already written.
I read it over carefully.
I hate the tree that stands in the courtyard. He wasn’t invited, and if he were a man, he would have been turned away at the entrance, or asked to pay an extra fee. But because he is green, and tall enough to cast shade on the concrete, and sighs in the summer wind like the others, he’s been allowed in.
The trees have seen me mumbling to myself. They’ve seen me tired, and unshaven, and wearing clothes that don’t match. The trees in the courtyard have seen me drunk, stumbling back from your house, as the residual warmth of your embrace began to fade. And in all these nights — days and nights, but mostly nights — they never judged me.
But this tree is different. At night, when his green leaves have turned black, and moonlight rather than sunlight defines his shadow, and the courtyard is windless, I can feel him watching me.
When I’m waiting for you to call, time contains more time. The best way to think about it is not a point moving across a horizontal line; I prefer the image of a jacket with many pockets. I am searching for something, patting myself down from top to bottom. There are far more pockets than expected, not just the hip pockets and the breast pocket but all kinds of secret inner pockets sewn into the lining. And every time my hand reaches in, grasping for something solid, I find myself slipping into another pocket, a pocket-within-a-pocket. This is how it feels to wait for your call.
Suddenly, the poem had taken on a new meaning. It wasn’t about the tree anymore. It was about the experience of longing for this mysterious “you” that always showed up in my poems. It was about waiting and the passage of time. The tree was just a smokescreen, an object for the narrator to project onto.
There was the problem that the first part ended in a “when x, then y” sentence, and the second part started with the same kind of sentence. Maybe that was a good thing, it created a sense of flow .. ? No, it was a problem. I would have to rephrase one of the sentences.
My thoughts shifted to the question of a title. “The Courtyard” is the first thing that came to mind. It was very straightforward, which is generally what I want from a title, but I wasn’t sure that it captured the feeling of the poem. I scanned the text for other phrases that might work. One jumped out at me: “summer wind.” Yes, I knew in an instant, that was the title. Summer Wind. It captured the feeling of restlessness that had been introduced to the poem when I added the second part. I typed it at the top of the document.
I went back to the sentences that needed work. “At night, when his green leaves have turned black, and moonlight rather than sunlight defines his shadow, and the courtyard is windless, I can feel him watching me.” No, that simply couldn’t be rephrased. The structure was essential to conveying the meaning. I looked at the other sentence: “When I’m waiting for you to call, time contains more time.” That one couldn’t be rephrased either. Maybe I could just get rid of it. Then the second part would start like this: “The best way to think about time is not a point moving across a horizontal line … ”
Wait, that was perfect! It actually improved the poem as a whole because it made the last line more surprising.
I reread the whole thing.
Summer Wind
I hate the tree that stands in the courtyard. He wasn’t invited, and if he were a man, he would have been turned away at the entrance, or asked to pay an extra fee. But because he is green, and tall enough to cast shade on the concrete, and sighs in the summer wind like the others, he’s been allowed in.
The trees have seen me mumbling to myself. They’ve seen me tired, and unshaven, and wearing clothes that don’t match. The trees in the courtyard have seen me drunk, stumbling back from your house, as the residual warmth of your embrace began to fade. And in all these nights — days and nights, but mostly nights — they never judged me.
But this tree is different. At night, when his green leaves have turned black, and moonlight rather than sunlight defines his shadow, and the courtyard is windless, I can feel him watching me.
The best way to think about time is not a point moving across a horizontal line; I prefer the image of a jacket with many pockets. I am searching for something, patting myself down from top to bottom. There are far more pockets than expected, not just the hip pockets and the breast pocket but all kinds of secret inner pockets sewn into the lining. And every time my hand reaches in, grasping for something solid, I find myself slipping into another pocket, a pocket-within-a-pocket. This is how it feels to wait for your call.
It wasn’t a masterpiece, but it was good enough to escape the “Miscellaneous” folder and make it into the “Stuff” folder on my desktop. Depositing the document in the correct folder, I shut my laptop and sat back in my chair.
The buzz of the mini fan filled the room. I gulped down the last of my tea, which had gone slightly cold in the time it had taken me to finish the poem. I looked at the timer on my phone. Four minutes remaining. Might as well go pick it up now, I thought. What difference could four minutes make.
The laundry room was empty. I guess the camp-collar guy had finished his batch. My machine was still running, so I had to open the door carefully to make sure the clothes didn’t tumble out. I reached inside to feel around. They weren’t completely dry, but they were dry enough; only a trace of dampness remained. I shoveled the monstrous pile into my basket, cleaned out the lint filter, and went back upstairs.
When I sat down at my desk and checked my phone, there was a message from Kurt:
boutta caravan if you want to pull up
I responded:
Sure
Be there in fifteen
I quickly unloaded the laundry basket onto the bed and folded my clothes. The slight dampness was already going away. When I was done with the shirts and underwear, I threw the socks into the bottom cupboard of my dresser. I never saw the point of folding socks.
In the tunnel underneath Central Station, the neon sign came into view. CARAVAN 24 HR COFFEE. I ducked my head under the doorway as I entered.
The place was busy. Mr. Pavone waved to me from behind the counter. I waved back and went over to the corner booth, where Kurt was already seated.
He was drawing on a napkin, nodding intently to the music playing in his earbuds.
“Did you order?” I said, sitting across from him.
“Yeah,” he said.
“What are you drawing?” I said.
Taking out his earbuds, he slid the napkin across the table. It was a drawing of a girl with long hair.
“Who’s this?” I said.
“Remember that girl from my dreams?” he said.
“She made another appearance?” I said.
He nodded.
“So this is what she looks like,” I said.
“Well, not really,” he said. “I haven’t captured her face. She always has this very … strange expression that I can’t fully remember once I’m awake.”
“What happened in the dream?” I said.
Before he could answer, Mr. Pavone came over with a glass of ice water and a napkin.
“I’ll have a coffee,” I said.
“Coffee,” said Mr. Pavone. He patted me on the back and walked off.
“I was a sailor working on a ship,” said Kurt. “Actually, it was a small ship that sat on top of a much bigger one. The small one was like an old fashioned wooden ship, and the bigger one was an aircraft carrier. I was working as a bartender on the small ship. It was some kind of event, like a black-tie gala. Rich people everywhere talking about stocks and global politics. And I kept seeing the girl moving in and out of the crowd. She was wearing the yellow sundress that she always wears, so she really stood out. I wanted to go look for her. But I couldn’t.”
“Why not?” I said.
“If I left the bar, I would get fired,” he said.
“Hm,” I said. “Was she looking at you?”
“I don’t think so,” he said.
I gazed out the window at the cars rushing through the tunnel.
“Yeah, I don’t think she likes me,” he said.
“Have you guys ever talked?” I said.
He shook his head. “I wish. If I were a lucid dreamer, I would make a concrete plan to talk to her, you know? But I can’t make plans about my dreams. For some reason, my dreaming self is not interested in conversations. Like, I told you about that time we were inside the hollow tree. We were staring into each other’s eyes. It was a beautiful moment. And I didn’t say anything.”
“You’re awestruck,” I said.
“Not exactly,” he said. “Actually, I feel really comfortable around her. I feel like she understands me.”
“I know what you mean,” I said. “Sometimes you can get that just from someone’s eyes.”
“What bothers me is that I can’t draw her eyes. I can’t even remember what they look like. Like, this … ” He held up the napkin. “This is just some random face pieced together from my imagination. But she’s not from my imagination. She’s real.”
I nodded.
There was a pause.
“Bro, you might be cooked,” I said. “You can’t even fuck a girl that you made up.”
Kurt burst into laughter, slamming his hand on the table. “Nah, that’s crazy,” he said. I laughed too.
Mr. Pavone came over with our drinks.
“Coffee,” he said, “and a banana milkshake.”
“Thank you so much,” said Kurt, still recovering from laughter.
“What’s so funny?” said Mr. Pavone.
“Nothing, nothing,” said Kurt.
Mr. Pavone stared at him. “What?”
“Just unrequited love,” said Kurt.
“You’re laughing about unrequited love?” said Mr. Pavone. He gave us a look of dry bewilderment. “The young people have a strange sense of humor.”
“You can say that again,” said Kurt.
Mr. Pavone patted us both on the back. “I’ll leave you boys alone.”
The coffee was bitter. I watched Kurt remove the paper wrapper from his straw.
“How’s the project going?” I said.
“The novel?” he said.
“Yeah.”
“I’m still in the planning stage. I haven’t started writing yet.”
“What’s holding you back?”
He took the first sip of his milkshake. “Nothing’s holding me back, I just like to have a clear picture before I start. I mean, there’s a lot of threads to keep track of. And before I start, I need to know how it ends.”
“See, that’s something I never understood. Why do you need to know how it ends?”
He drummed four fingers against his chin. “Think about it like a house. If you’re the architect, you don’t design the first floor of the house and then call up the construction crew. You don’t say, ‘I’ll think about the second floor when we’re done with the first.’ You need to have the full blueprint of the house before you lay a single brick. Because every part of the design has to cohere with every other part.”
“I see.”
“I guess it applies less to poetry. Poetry is a more, uh … ephemeral art form. Less holistic.”
I considered it for a moment. “I would say that I do think holistically. But I can still start a poem without knowing how it’s gonna end.”
“How?”
“I start with a certain idea in mind. That idea might transform into something else as I’m writing. All I need is a clear starting point.”
“Mm.”
We watched some people passing by. A family of tourists, by the look of it. They stopped at the window, squinting into the warmly lit interior of Caravan. After a few moments, the guy said something to his wife, who seemed to agree, and they kept walking.
“Thank God,” said Kurt.
I laughed.
“How’s your stuff going?” he said. “Anything new?”
“I wrote something just now,” I said.
“Like, just now just now?”
“An hour ago.”
“Can I see it?”
“Sure.”
I pulled up “Summer Wind” on my phone and handed it to Kurt.
There was a very intense look on his face as he read. Every word seemed to be making an impact. Now and then, his mouth would unconsciously reach for the straw to extract some milkshake.
When he was done, he smiled and handed the phone back to me. “Banger.”
“Oh yeah?”
He nodded. “Banger. Especially the ending.”
“Thanks.”
“But what tree are you talking about?” he said. “Did you make that up?”
“There’s a new tree in the courtyard of my building. It just randomly showed up today. A full-grown mature tree.”
“What do you mean randomly showed up?”
“I don’t know. I have no explanation.”
“You must have just not noticed it until today.”
I shook my head. “I’m telling you. It was not there yesterday.”
“How could a tree just appear? I mean, they would have needed a construction crew to, like … ”
“I know. I know. It’s a mystery.”
“Can I see the poem again?”
“Sure.”
I handed the phone back to him and he reread it.
“I feel like it could be longer,” he said.
“You always say that,” I said.
“I do always say that,” he said with a smile. “I do always say that. And I’m always right.”
“Which part needs to be longer?”
He looked back at the poem. “The first part. Like, I want more detailed description of the tree.”
“You can come see the tree yourself if you want.”
“No, I mean in the poem. I don’t care about the actual tree.”
“I prefer to leave it mysterious.”
“Yeah, but then … there’s already so much mystery in the poem. Like, who is it addressed to, who is this ‘you.’ That’s a mystery in itself. So I think the tree needs to be a little less mysterious. It’s all about balance.”
He handed the phone back. “Just my two cents.”
“Okay, I’ll think about it.” I put the phone back in my pocket. “What do you have so far with your novel?”
“I was actually thinking about incorporating the girl from my dreams into it.”
“Hm.”
“I mean, not as a dream-woman. As a real woman.”
“If you’ve never heard her speak, then how are you gonna write her character?”
“You said it yourself. It’s all in the eyes!”
“You think you can write an entire character based off the eyes?”
“It’s at least a challenge, right?”
“I guess so.”
“Well — how much of the story do you remember?”
“I think I remember the gist of it. It’s about the war.”
“Yeah.”
“And how does a woman fit into that?”
“That’s what I was just thinking about before you walked in. The idea that I’m playing with at the moment is that she’s, like, a war photographer.”
“The main character is a mutineer, right?”
“Exactly. So maybe she’s a war photographer who gets mixed up with him on his journey into the jungle.”
I sipped my coffee. “Low-key … I would read that.”
“I need to work on it more,” he said. “I can’t start until I have a clearer picture of all the characters. I definitely don’t have a clear picture of her right now.”
“Do you know her name?”
“Not yet. I would have to ask her in the dream. And I don’t know when that will happen.”
“Have you tried lucid dreaming?” I said.
“I didn’t know that was something you could try,” he said. “I thought you either have it or you don’t.”
“I’m pretty sure you can train yourself to lucid dream. There’s a method. Like, keeping a dream journal and stuff.”
“Well, I already keep a dream journal.”
I looked up from my mug. “Really?”
“Of course.”
“You never told me that.”
“I’m a man of secrets.”
“No, you’re not!”
He laughed. “I’m not a man of secrets?”
“Hell no!” I said. “You’re allergic to secrets.”
“Are you a man of secrets?”
“More than you, that’s for sure.”
“What about Felix?”
“Definitely more than you.”
He looked out the window with a wry smile on his face. “Yes, I keep a dream journal. It hasn’t led to any lucid dreaming.”
Motorcycles zoomed by in the tunnel.
“You wanna see it?” he said.
“I’m good,” I said.
Mr. Pavone came around to refill my coffee.
“Another milkshake?” he said to Kurt.
“No thanks,” said Kurt.
Mr. Pavone put his hands on our shoulders. “Are you boys gonna come tonight?”
“For what?” I said.
“Oh, you gotta come! Some bands are performing and we’ll have free drinks.” He leaned in to whisper. “And there will be a lot of cute girls.”
“What makes you think we’re after that?” I said.
“Your cock works, doesn’t it?” said Mr. Pavone.
“Which bands?” said Kurt.
“The main event is The Popes,” said Mr. Pavone. “Have you heard of them?”
“I’m not really tapped into the music scene,” said Kurt.
“Very cool young guys. Always look like this — ” He imitated the nonchalant posture of a rock musician. “They remind me of the punks that were popular when I was a kid. I didn’t like them then, because they stole the girls from me.”
“The Popes,” Kurt repeated.
I searched them up on Spotify. Their top song was called “She She She.” I hit play and held up my phone.
It was hard to hear over the clamor of the café, but I could make out that it was something in the vicinity of noise rock: lots of distortion, lots of reverb, big sloppy drums. Maybe some synthesizers in the mix. The singer began to moan:
And fire
The water comes
Me me me
No time
You’re being dumb
She she she
She found an eyelash
I wonder who it’s from
At least that’s what it sounded like. Kurt and I looked at each other. It seemed from his expression that he had the same skeptical opinion as I did.
I paused the song. “That’s cool.”
“They’re very hot right now,” said Mr. Pavone. “Here, let me show you — ”
He pulled up the poster for the event on his phone and showed it to us proudly.
“Did you design that?” I said.
“My daughter,” he said. “She is a graphic design student at the university.”
“Oh wow,” I said.
“If you ever need something — a poster or website or something like this — she’s the person for you.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said.
“See you boys tonight,” he said, and disappeared.
We looked at each other.
“Did we just agree to go?” said Kurt.
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“Do you wanna go?”
“Hm … ”
“I mean, I’m down.”
I looked out the window. “I think tonight might be a chill night for me.”
“For real?” Kurt looked disappointed.
“You wanna go?” I said.
“Just to check it out,” he said. “We don’t have to stay for long.”
“You can obviously go — like, even if I don’t.”
“Yeah.”
But I knew that he would never go alone.
“That’s alright,” he said.
“What do you think of The Popes?” I said.
“Straight ass.”
“Yeah.”
“I get so disappointed whenever one of these indie bands gets to the chorus and it’s just the same chords as the verse with the bass turned up. It’s so lazy. Like, songs used to have a verse, a chorus with completely different chords, and a bridge! The bridge is such a lost art. You ever listen to those Paul McCartney bridges? They’re the best part of the song sometimes.”
“I appreciate a good bridge. But you also know how much I like repetitive music.”
“I remember you had that phase where all you listened to was Indian classical.”
“I’m low key still in that phase.”
“There’s some cool ideas in there. For sure.”
“Nah nah nah, you were hating. Don’t switch up now.”
He laughed. “Okay, fuck Indian music. Is that better?”
“Much better.”
My cup was empty. I drank the cream from the little saucer on the side.
“You don’t think we should go just to support Caravan?” said Kurt.
“I think Caravan’s doing fine,” I said.
“But then, we’re regulars. Don’t you think regulars have to show love?”
“The only thing regulars have to do is show up regularly. This is a business, not a community co-op.”
Kurt took a sip of his milkshake.
“What?” I said. “You trying to run a two-man?”
“Don’t project your horniness onto me.”
“I’m the least horny man on earth,” I said.
“Sure,” he said, his mouth full of milkshake.
We paid up at the counter. Mr. Pavone dropped the change into Kurt’s open palm.
“See you boys tonight!” he said.
As we walked out the door, Kurt gave me a look that was intended to make me feel guilty.
“He won’t notice our absence,” I said. “And if he does, he’ll just assume that we’re busy.”
“Busy?” said Kurt.
“Anyone can be busy,” I said.
We stood outside Caravan in the cool shade of the underpass. At the end of the tunnel, office buildings gleamed in the sun.
“We don’t do enough for him,” said Kurt.
“We come everyday,” I said. “Isn’t that enough?”
“But then … he gives us free shit. He goes above and beyond.”
“That’s out of the kindness of his own heart.”
“Then we should do something out of the kindness of our hearts.”
“If we did something, it would become transactional. The whole point is that he’s doing something nice without getting anything in return.”
“Fair enough. I still feel bad.”
A motorcycle rushed past.
“So what’s your plan for today?” said Kurt.
“I’ll probably head back, read a bit, and uh … wait, is there a game tonight?”
“I don’t think so.”
I pulled out my phone to look it up. “There is a game tonight! We’re playing the Barracudas.”
“For real? What time?”
“Seven-thirty.”
“Bro, we’re clapping the Barracudas. They can’t guard us.”
“Yeah. So that’s what I’ll be doing tonight.”
He scratched his chin. “I mean, we could watch at my place. Get a pizza and stuff.”
“I think I need some R&R.”
“R&R? From what?”
“Just, you know. Life.” I could see from his face that he didn’t know. “Chill night to myself type shit.”
“Fair enough.”
We dapped each other up.
“Palace tomorrow?” said Kurt.
“Definitely,” I said.
“Alright, see you then.”
“See ya.”
We exited the tunnel in opposite directions.
On the walk home, I thought about the song from The Popes. “And fire / The water comes / Me me me / No time / You’re being dumb / She she she / She found an eyelash / I wonder who it’s from.” I hadn’t particularly liked it in the moment, but now the lyrics were rattling around my head. I think what I liked was that the lyrics had clearly emanated from the music, rather than the music emanating from the lyrics. Whenever I tried to write songs, I had to start with lyrics. And as a result, they would sound awkward when put to music. I really admired the ability that many songwriters had of writing a melody and letting words just instinctually form around that melody. In some sense, the result was “random,” because it came from the unconscious without any intentional structure, but at the same time, the unconscious has its own reasons. There is a certain intangible unity to lyrics that are written like that.
I arrived at my building. Before heading upstairs, I checked the mail; nothing except a notice from the pension program, which I ignored. I never pay attention to things like that unless they really bother me about it.
When I got up to my apartment, I felt the clothes that I had hung up. Most of them were still damp, though the shirts closer to the window had dried out. I went out to the balcony and sat down. The air was already beginning to soften. I lit a cigarette.
Pulling up the “Stuff” folder on my phone, I scrolled down to “Summer Wind.” I read it over again.
I hate the tree that stands in the courtyard. He wasn’t invited, and if he were a man, he would have been turned away at the entrance, or asked to pay an extra fee. But because he is green, and tall enough to cast shade on the concrete, and sighs in the summer wind like the others, he’s been allowed in.
The trees have seen me mumbling to myself. They’ve seen me tired, and unshaven, and wearing clothes that don’t match. The trees in the courtyard have seen me drunk, stumbling back from your house, as the residual warmth of your embrace began to fade. And in all these nights — days and nights, but mostly nights — they never judged me.
But this tree is different. At night, when his green leaves have turned black, and moonlight rather than sunlight defines his shadow, and the courtyard is windless, I can feel him watching me.
The best way to think about time is not a point moving across a horizontal line; I prefer the image of a jacket with many pockets. I am searching for something, patting myself down from top to bottom. There are far more pockets than expected, not just the hip pockets and the breast pocket but all kinds of secret inner pockets sewn into the lining. And every time my hand reaches in, grasping for something solid, I find myself slipping into another pocket, a pocket-within-a-pocket. This is how it feels to wait for your call.
The first paragraph felt out of step with the rest of the poem. It had a slightly humorous feeling, especially the part about being “turned away at the entrance, or asked to pay an extra fee.” It was portraying the tree as a nuisance. Then the third paragraph portrays the tree as an object of fear. Nothing can be a nuisance and an object of fear at the same time.
Of course, I could just change it. But those were the words that had come to me, those words and no others. Just like the songwriter of The Popes had naturally arrived at “She found an eyelash / I wonder who it’s from,” I had naturally arrived at “He would have been turned away at the entrance, or asked to pay an extra fee.” That’s what my unconscious had produced. And it didn’t work.
Instead of deleting the whole thing, I moved it to the “Miscellaneous” folder. There had to be something right about the transition from the first part to the second part. That had felt so perfect when I discovered it.
I took the last pull of my cigarette and flicked into the ashtray. Across the courtyard, an old man was hanging up clothes on his balcony. I saw him doing this every week; he was one of the recurring characters of my smoke breaks. This week, our laundry days had coincided. His movements were meticulous. It probably took him half an hour to hang everything up. But he didn’t seem to mind.
I went back inside. The apartment was getting dim as the evening approached, so I turned on all the lights. Then I took a quick shower.
I came out feeling refreshed, like I had been purged of something. Sitting on my bed, I pulled a freshly laundered pair of socks over my feet. My phone said 6:39. The game was about to start.
In the kitchen, I pulled random ingredients out of the fridge: a bell pepper, some leftover chorizo, a can of tomatoes, eggs, and a half-onion. I chopped up the pepper and onion and threw them into a pan with some oil. After they had softened, I poured in the tomatoes and chorizo, stirring the mixture every few seconds. Finally, I scooped out little holes in the pan and cracked in the eggs. When the whites were cooked, I slid the whole concoction onto a plate, making sure not to disturb the yolks. I grabbed a beer from the fridge and rushed over to the living room couch. As I pulled the game up on my laptop, tipoff was occurring.
We started the game on a three-point shooting streak. They just weren’t getting back quick enough on defense to guard the open shooter. We always have someone leaking out to catch full-court passes. But our hot streak soon petered out and the Barracudas got into their gritty post game, tying it up at 25 to end the first quarter. That’s the perennial problem with the Lightning: our offense is so strong that we forget to play defense. And we don’t have anyone to protect the rim.
In the second quarter, they slowly built a 10-point lead. The minutes with Cardoza on the bench are always the most dangerous, and they took full advantage of it. The Barracudas are an ugly but effective team. They rip out your soul, rebound by rebound.
At halftime, I went out to the balcony to smoke. It was dark already. In the lighted windows around the courtyard, I could see roommates and young couples chatting in their living rooms. Some of them were probably watching the halftime report.
I looked down at the trees. The green canopies were illuminated by the surrounding lamps. That was another problem with my poem: I had said that the leaves “turned black” at night and that their shadows were “defined by moonlight,” somehow forgetting that at night, the courtyard is anything but dark. It’s bathed in an electric glow from the windows and lamps, a glow that only goes away when the sun starts to rise. Despite its poetic qualities, moonlight is not a part of this glow. In fact, I couldn’t even see the moon from my balcony.
We poets have an outdated concept of the night. We’re still imagining this eery atmosphere of darkness, silence, and moonlight, but that isn’t the modern experience of night. The modern night is crowded, noisy, and full of light. The one commonality between the two is loneliness.
I turned the game back on. The third quarter had just started; Cardoza was back in, looking sweaty and determined. I had faith that we could cut into their lead. However, the Lightning seemed to have other plans. Everyone except Cardoza could not make a three to save their lives. I actually thought our defense was improved from the first half, but it wasn’t enough to make up for the atrocious shooting performance. Even the announcers were commenting on the uncharacteristic slump. The coach called a bunch of timeouts, to no avail. I’ve always been skeptical of the effectiveness of timeouts. It’s a universal axiom in basketball that calling a timeout helps the players reset. Is there any concrete evidence for that? It might just be a useless ritual that we’re too dogmatic to give up.
Late in the third quarter, the lead had extended to 20. I sat scraping the last bits of sauce from my plate. We were gonna lose this game — not because of the score, but because our guys just weren’t mentally in it. They looked like a bunch of local rec players out there. When the fourth quarter came around and there was no improvement, the coach took all the starters out. I didn’t feel like watching garbage time, so I shut off the game and closed my computer.
I sat there on the couch, sipping my beer. It was quiet, except for the hum of the refrigerator and the distant honks.
A warm breeze came through the window, rustling the curtains. From a nearby balcony, I heard wind chimes.
I washed the dishes in the sink, wiped down the coffee table, and left everything to dry. Then I put on my shoes and headed downstairs.