Muscle Memory
This poem likes to dance to my playlist Big City Stories.
Muscle Memory
Late night in the bar
I’m eating up life
like a kid with a snow cone
on a hot summer day.
My body takes over —
the muscle memory
of all those NYC nights
from long ago.
Flirting with a brown-skinned cutie
and his knockout smile
trying to guess his life story.
Getting weepy at the bar
when a couple not much younger than me
tells me their love story.
Making my about-to-be-divorced friend
promise she won’t get cosmetic surgery.
Because she’s beautiful.
Because fuck him!
Because we all want people to love us
for who we are inside.
Because this world is made up of stories.
Some will make you laugh so hard
your drink shoots out your nose.
Some will make you cry
and remember what it feels like
to have your heart broken.
And some will simply give you
a window into another life.
A life that’s probably
not that different from your own,
when you get down
to the heart of it.