This Feeling Is... Painfully familiar!

Mistakes were made.

Fool me once… *Violent Flashbacks*

The silence quenches my thirst for a place where I do not have to brace everything I am and protect everything I have ever built.

A kind unassuming kind of harmony should persist.

I think we have all grown accustomed to chaos, but we deserve more peace, wouldn’t you agree?

I have outgrown this place.

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Sunglasses on the Firescape - image 1 - student project

I have fragmented scattered musings as I walk down the Woodhaven block. The walk from my prewar building to Liza’s prewar building is only a few hundred feet south. Woodhaven, Queens is an unasuming neighborhood in Queens, New York. A neighborhood hidden beneath the meander of the last ice age and Forest Park. It is a collective hidden in the trees (to the north) and the above ground subway (to the south). A place where, neighbors still know each other, and a helping hand is only a fist bump away.

Liza, a grade school teacher who recently moved into the neighborhood from somewhere deep upstate New York. For city dwellers, Upstate New York is anywhere north of Westchester - though this is highly debated...

Liza and I get close rather quickly. We meet as she walks past our building towards to park with her stocky and friendly french bulldog, Roxie. Liza was wise, fun, goofy, kind, and reflective. I loved any excuse to go to her apartment. I thought she was generous to befriend me, but looking back now, she was definitely lonely.

I admired Liza incredibly. What was there to not aspire to? She lived on her own, she had a stable job, she had all the Roku T.V channels necessary to function as an adult at the time — and her couch was always a safe place to be after a fight with my mom. Liza was the ring leader and pioneer of my independence era. I was in my trade school program at the time, a magical mystical higher educational experience, the entire time with the neighbors was mystical. Because I knew, I would never live in the city again. I was going to escape.

And after we discovered the existence of “Sunglasses” on the firescape, my life would never be the same.

Liza played the ukulele. We loved to sit down and sing together on occasion. Until, one of the last times I would ever step foot in her apartment. The day we discovered the note on the firescape...

We have been climbing out on the firescape to hang out, since it was summer time and gorgeous mild and cozy temperature was permeating Woodhaven. Usually, summers were sticky, humid, and insufferable. Day after day we decided to take her ukulele, and my journal, ourselves, and the boxed wine out on the firescape. But when I arrived that one morning, Liza was worried. She pointed to a note that was taped to her side of the firescape.

That is creepy! Liza, who’s the note from?

I opened her kitchen window and climbed out on her firescape, little did I know, that would be the last time.

There is a note and phone number in here from a guy named “Sunglasses,” I roar with laughter and bounce with excitment, And look he left us two joints!

Liza looked perplexed.

We shouldn’t smoke that dude.

I was 19 and unhinged so naturally, I insisted Liza we smoke,

We should not only smoke these but we should thank “Sunglasses”!

I dance around her kitchen lighting the joint and typing out Sunglasses number on my phone:

Heyyyy. Thanks for the weed. Who are youuu?! SUNGLASSES?!

The weed is potent and Liza is worried at this point. I started feeling woozy. Liza has not smoked but she is more paranoid than I ever was. I should have taken her concerns seriously — Sunglasses infulrtated our lives from that day forward in more ways than one.

I was worried, the look in Liza's eyes was the one of endings. The crew of neighbors we cultivated together was dismantling. And Sunglasses was baiting us. Sunglasses was watching, from a little too close. Hoping to gain access. He was writing himself into our story. Instead it was torn apart.

Shortly after meeting Sunglasses, I fell into a deep psychosis. I had to move away and never look back. Sometimes going back to my neighborhood is difficult. It feels almost haunted when I arrive and my neighbors still fist bump me and know my face at the local dive. I was not even fully alive for them to have all this access to me.

Can you blame me for trying to dismantle myself? After Liza? After Sunglasses?
I packed my bags, climbed down the fire escape, and never looked back.

Lucy Ford

Carpenter's apprentice and poet

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