Guy Debord, Chas Carey
Chas Carey
Originally published in theNewerYork (June 2014).
1. I love you like a city. We take a map and drip India ink on it from a stepladder. Then we explore the new streets created by the blotches.
2. We share spectacular scenes from our upbringings at quiet dinners in popular neighborhoods. During lulls in the conversation, we complain to our social networks about the paucity of our health insurance.
3. We worry that love is just another facet of our desire to consume. I love what you’ve done with this new furniture. I love these leftovers I scarf out of the fridge at one in the morning. I love you.
4. We had no frame of reference for each other beyond what the screens in our hands told us. We put them away and got lost in crowded warrens that no one had planned.
5. We move in each other’s arms as we sleep, and we dream that we are books with sandpaper covers. We wear down each other’s rough edges. We wake up sweating. When we are smooth, what will be left of us?
6. I love you like a city. We fight for the little things that make us seem like home to each other. But they will bulldoze our neighborhood and put up a condo tower with big signs in the empty retail spaces on the ground floor: TELL YOUR FRIENDS.
Chas Carey is an attorney living in Brooklyn. His writing has appeared in places such as NANO Fiction, Sinkhole Magazine, and the Hearth Gods reading series. As an actor, his credits include the Off-Broadway premiere of The Rape of the Sabine Women, by Grace B. Matthias, and Righteous Money at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. He is available on Twitter.
