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The wind kicked up by a passing F train as I transfer to the J is as warm and as intimate and as yielding of a touch as I’ve had in weeks. Almost a hand on the back of my neck. I feel like my poor little house plant that got fried under the blast of the heat in my apartment, took me weeks to figure out the venting and in the meantime the fern fried and died (the ones closer to the window are growing strong, they reach for the light and look to me as if they are planning to escape my clutches). All of my sexual fantasies have boiled down to single caresses from specific individuals, a flat palm in the center of my chest or fingernails on my forearm. I started noticing people’s hands - their articulations, their veins, their tattoos, their winter dryness, their size.

A sudden realization that my fears of intimacy have prevented me from singing close harmonies all these years.

A sudden realization that I have established a very delicate framework in which to love myself.

With this whole thing last year, with all the running and the pounds shed, with further, grander reaches I dare not mention out loud for fear of spooking them off like wild horses I repeatedly challenge myself to prove my worth. And so far, since I got into the habit, I haven’t had to deal with the wet sag of failure. I’ve hit the benchmarks, progress is made, I feel capable and strong and worthy and hot. I’ve made the necessary sacrifices in sleep and in love and in unstructured time. I have great esteem for myself but only if I meet my own standards. I do not yet believe, that merely because I am human and alive, that I am inherently valuable, worthy of love and affection, special. I allow myself these things because I feel that they are earned through my efforts. As long as that’s true I don’t think I’ll ever know rest.

A man bombastically selling his poetry chapbooks on the train out of a neon pink adidas gym bag tells me that writing is as close as he ever gets to god. I do not buy his book.

I'm told tonight that I have lost my ability to be satisfied and fulfilled by stillness in the world. I say no, that's not true, when I walk home from dancing for hours by myself and I hear the birds singing over my ears ringing as day breaks I am very satisfied and fulfilled. There's no one around, just me and my footsteps. I even pass a street sign that reads "COVERT JOY," how could I have lost my ability? And I'm told no, that doesn't count, not really, you're wallowing in negative space and not in the world as it is. Be alone, it is suggested. Sit quietly. Allow yourself to be intimate with your own company and the thought makes my heart pound.

My friend asks me to describe his music for him and the image I come up with is clear and quick to rise to the surface, though it describes maybe how I feel about him and less his music - I see a beat up car late at night, driving in a town or the outskirts of a city when most people have already gone to bed, the feeling of being beyond the world or at its edge. And rubbing sleep from your eyes. The unsettling idea that cigarette smoke has been inside someone’s body when it comes back out exhaled, carrying some of their wet inner warmth with it and hanging in the air, describing the shape of their lungs. How close and sweet it feels when someone’s breath is commingled with yours (harmony singing). The comfort and security of getting a ride home at the end of the night, or the similar feeling of waking up one someone else’s couch or in someone else’s home, saying hello to each other quietly, the shuffle of heating hot water. The music sounds like conveyance, how if you wanted you could curl up and fall asleep anywhere, no one controls you, how deeply long a day can go, and how wide.

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from My Big Break - volume 1, released July 16, 2020

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Ben Seretan Climax, New York

**ECSTATIC JOY**

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