Abby Sugar
Waking Life
1 Quarters spinning upright on tables around the room. Put in motion and then put in motion again, the feeling that can only be described in French. It’s watching your memories. Weight of the ocean, air waves or brain waves painted purple like flowers from Africa. If purple means love or purple means indifference, meaning misplaced in repetition. 2 I wanted to ask a question about the future, thinking thinking thinking without breath. This is irrelevant if I only exist in your mind. Maybe I do. I am still as real as anything else, like those fingers holding the base of the wine glass. Setting it on the table, gesturing towards the next act. 3 Yearly concerts. The dinner party afterward, black dress, new apartment, same people hovering in the kitchen. Black Formica countertops. Red wine. And cheese. Cupcakes! I wandered around doorknobs saying these sounds, spinning quarters in my head even knowing I wouldn’t find you anywhere.
Abby Sugar lives and writes in New York City. She has studied poetry at Barnard College, the University of Michigan, and the Summer Literary Seminars in St. Petersburg, Russia.
