The If's; They Do Not Exist.

I never learned to skateboard. 
I was always afraid of falling, not anymore . 

My God, if I could I would glide past you all. 

So fast and so free.

My legs are heavy;
 my soul is too wild to be in this body. 

So I leap. 

"Why are you here Maverick?

I told security not to let you in."

If I could fly, I would. I would be far above you. 

You just go on, try and throw another punch at me!
 I would beat my wings with such a ferocity It would throw you on your back.
 before your hateful fist came near me. 

I see your back hit the cement. The wind is knocked out of you. I hover above you. 

I watch you as you look up at me, squinting. The horror and shock upon your face is priceless.
 I smile at your frailty. 

I look for a street sign, something familiar. I am on Twenty Seventh street and First Avenue.

I never really liked this area.

I almost died near here a couple of years ago. 
Some say I'm crazy.

I take off higher and go towards the north end of the east village. 

I perch on top of the W hotel on the north east side of Union Square Park. 

I think for a moment about the night I stayed here, with a tipsy yuppie, young and pretty woman. 

I believe she thought she saw a lost part of herself in me. I had spotted her as she drunkenly stumbled out of the bar onto down third avenue near twelfth street. I was going to immediately treat her as I treated all civilians back then and just ask her for money, but she had started a normal conversation with me. She spoke of the woes we women suffer and endure in terms regarding the male species idea of we are. I remember that I had looked at her fur coat, her manicured nails in contrast with the misery behind her words and her drunken state and immediately thought of Norma Jean Baker.

Mirrors, all of us are mirrors!

I thought I knew that already but it is indisputable now.

This entire time, I know that everyone I ever met was a mirror.

 When I began to notice how late it was getting, 

I gave her my speech about the hostel I needed money for. 

She did not think twice and invited me to stay with her.

 "No, no. don't worry about that! You can stay in my room tonight."

 I asked where she was staying, 
she told me the 'W' at Union. I was aghast.

 She may be intoxicated but I will not lose a chance to stay inside this hotel I had lusted for. 

I knew I would not take advantage of her. 

 I stained her pillowcase pink with my hair dye. 

I had sweat out some of the poison as I grew sick during the night.

 I smile at the thought. 
She whined about a security deposit and left early in the morning.

 I did not steal from her. 
I do remember wishing I had at least told her the truth about what I needed money for. 

After she left to catch a flight she was running late for and the door shut behind her. 

In the quiet I quickly realized just how sick I was, acute opiate withdrawal. 

(The things I did to myself, I cry at the thought.)

I had grabbed up my backpack ran my fingers through my hair, put on my mascara and went straight into the park to see if I could get a front. 

All the dealers knew I was good for it, I was money making machine. 

A scrambled up robot, a non feeling, non thinking machine that served only to serve itself.

Stuck and doomed to repeat. 

I look at that park now six years later and my heart breaks for the tale spinning broken girl I was.

I leap off of the building and circle around the park, just out of the naked branches reach; my eyes skim the faces for anyone recognizable.

Danny is gone, he is dead, I do not know anything else.

 I Know somehow that I will never see his beautiful face again. 

He was one of the bunch that fought for my affection when I first turned up in union and it had become common knowledge that I too was a creature attached to the daemon. 

Of course, I choose the one that sold what I required and I knew would never ask me for money.

Then he too was gone, not dead though. 

He went back to the place where 'they' put all the ones that supply what the seekers are after. 

I did what I do best.
 I had survived. spirit still intact. 

This made me stronger, wiser, more compassionate.

 It all did. 

Now I fly above all those ghosts.

The ghost of who I once was.

I see the dog park and my chest tightens. I remind myself that it is all over now. 

Maximus is long gone. My beautiful honey colored warrior. A pit bull I loved.

 He made a man bleed once because the man had pushed me. He nearly tore his arm off. 

I would have married a man like that, a man that fought for me. 

If only men acted more like there so called best friend's.

 To be as loyal and protective as they are.
To be more like the golden sweet and unruly Maximus.

I let a tear fall down my face for the man that I will never know. 

What harsh lessons I learned from that individual alone. 

A man that was trapped inside a body I slept with for nearly five years.

I will never know him and  I will never be with him. 

Now, it is enough that I can fight for myself.

I hope that boy finds peace. Before he finds his death. 

I think for a moment how cruel, strange, how random, how unjust it all seems.

Who dies and who lives.

I glide above the barren trees and I think of the children I gave birth to when I was still a child. 

They will come to know the truth one day and love me as I love them. 

I beat my wings with all my might as I head south. 

Away from futile "If only's" and all ghosts of the like. 

I am peace with that now.

I am high above the city now, I can see the World Trade Center and the 9/11 memorial.

I feel a shock of  keen awareness for all the untimely death and pain that occurred here. 

I go straight down Broadway and lean west once I near Wall Street.

I circle the old graveyard in the back of the church and I can feel hundreds of years more pain then I could have imagined possible. 

All this suffering, how selfish I was once.

I slow the thunder of my wings and place my feet on the ledge of the church. 

I look out at all the empty streets that should be busy.

I am crouched now, between the clock and steeple at Trinity Church.

Where are all the people, the cars, the taxi cabs, the buses, the noise of the subway?

Maybe it is all one long dream.

I think about how glorious it will be when he and I find one another. 

This soul who will share with me and I will share with thee.

In time's own time.

You who are as strong as I am. 

You, who have known hell like I have known hell, so intimately, so horrifically. 

We will respect its existence and keep well above. 

We will hold one another's hand on an equal plane. 

I feel another's gaze and it feels ancient.

He is waiting for me.

It is dawn.

I am not among the living.

I did not just grow wings, this is not a dream.

Now everything clicked into place all at once.

I was having a transplant at Bellevue Hospital. 

The Doctor had said that fatalities were rare but not unheard of. 

They told me to count backwards from ten,

I turn my head to the left and upward as he turns his to the right.  

Our eyes meet. 

He looks exactly like me with masculine features.

A silver cord severed.

Recognition, respect and admiration. 

One, two and three. 

Our expression's change into something similiar to a smile but it is peace and finality that we feel. 

His emotions are directly connected to mine. 

A golden thread unfurls at our fingertips. as we slowly reach out to one another.

We breath deeply. 

Our wings unfurl and we clasp our hands together.  

I finally found the lost part of myself.

We look out to the tip of the island. 

The buildings I can now see for what they always were. 

Dust and ash, it's all just dust.

We watch them fall one by one. 

This is not earth.

 This is but a shadow of what we once called earth. 

 The foundation starts to crumble beneath us.
 We begin to beat our wings synchronously. 
Rhythmically, to the sounds of something I had never heard outside of my own mind.
I remember the poet in the ally I sang for ten years ago.
He said that I had the voice of a thousand angels screaming.
I now know the sound he was speaking of.

"I still can cry!" I think wordlessly with  an infantile joy and I see that I am understood. 

As I feel tears streaming down my face I see his tears are falling as well.

I am not suffering anymore. 

There are no "If's" here.
They do not exist. 

We simply fly.

Just thought and manifestation.

Mary Catherine, Cowardice Queen.