New Poetry/Prose By Lia Parisyan

Cold and jittery, wearing a damp winter coat, well past

December on a snow drift afternoon north of New York City,

watching Q-tip cotton flakes fall, melting the instant they meet

pavement miles

apart though wide-paneled windows

as a woman laments in minor, her voice rises

and soothes the quiet worries of wrinkled brows,

frowning over clock faces as I listen to the drink

orders of a hundred strangers, well into my third

refill (that's 60 ounces of steaming bold-roasted coffee).

My heart is racing, and I'm still, twirling, it seems

the world is pirouetting out of control, like a father waiting

in a room with candy and roses because first born

cigars are reserved for the black and white spaces

of 50's sitcoms, "I Love Lucy's" lung cancer, twiddling my thumbs

my head's spinning from the rush of caffeine as my phone

blinks, and makes its final sounds,

as if I needed to be alerted to digital death-- it's no surprise,

I can't afford a meal, let alone, a replacement charger

Two week withdrawal has killed my immunity to

the synthetic surge.

I walked through the park, my hair was white as a

widow's and my lashes were wet, coated with a thin layer

of delicate powder. I wandered miles today because I have no place

to call home, an atomic shadow of a nuclear family, no job, no income,

a hundred dreams, a long-distance, perpetually absent father, who

left me, pinching my cheek as if, I was some rapscallion, some coach's

star athlete, injured and replete with nothing to offer, the last words

he ever spoke, "I'm done," and he wasn't kidding

I have yet to see a dime from the child support he owes me,

a decade overdue, and it's a good thing, I haven't approached Life

like a tunnel, waiting for the glorious light at the end-- I didn't hold my breath

by now, I would have been dead and purple. Instead of Love,

I'm strangled by expectations, choked by hopes as thick as jungle vines,

wrapping around my neck and my tired limbs, waiting for my veins to swell

and pop, surrounded by predators, ready to swallow me whole like

boa constrictors.