The youngest part of me, a backlight of wandering wondering, free, emanating.

Norfolk, Virginia. June 2019.
I tell **** that I admire him because he’s shameless. What I meant was vulnerable.

Brooklyn, New York. June 2020.
It’s almost always true.

High Bridge, New Jersey. October 2015.
Head cocked up at the changing October trees on the once verdant toe-path. The backlit overcast sky mirrors the worn-grey gravel, hysterical, sobbing and laughing. A man jogs by as I tell myself out loud that I will never forget this exact moment. I will never forget it I will never forget it. Within an hour, kicked out of my mother’s house.

Lebanon, New Jersey. July, 2014.
We are staring at each other floating in the Raritan River hard rocks bourgeoning under it all glistening, wet, he is coming towards me with his mouth slightly agape I swim away, he does not follow.

Brooklyn, New York. September 2019.
After a night of silly drunkenness, stumbling into the kitchen where ******** is smoking, playing a game on his phone. The plan is to sulk, to wade in the blue-light of the 4.7 inch screen–surrender to it–functionally incoherent in my bed, fetal position (in more ways than one), waiting for sleep to envelop. He sees me and grins, about to recall what I certainly don’t remember saying or doing the previous night.
With a raised hand I stop him, pour myself a glass of water, start walking back to my room.
“I remember shame,” he says, with signature, lovable snark.

Brooklyn, New York. June 2020.
I google “shame.”
The trailer for Steve McQueen’s 2011 “Shame” pops up.
It is intriguing, but what I’m looking for isn’t sexy and I’m not paying $3.99 to get to the bottom of this.
I dig a little deeper.
Brene Brown’s apparently viral TEDtalk (35,000,000+ views) surfaces. Illuminating, maybe, but not quite it.

Brooklyn, New York. June 2020.
We are drinking and **** is cutting a line, **** says that every morning after getting fucked up he is out of his mind depressed, shameful.
“It’s my evangelical upbringing.”
We continue drinking all through the night.
Awake on their couch, wonder if it will be the last time I feel like this.
**** doesn’t come out of his room all morning.
I imagine him fetal. He emerges to get a glass of water.

High Bridge, New Jersey. October 2015.
I lie.

Denmark. April 2018.
In an interview with Louisiana Channel, Zadie Smith sits, sniffling:
LC: what is shame?
ZS: shame gets a bad rap these days. I think it’s a useful emotion[…] There’s a shame of being vulnerable, a loser, there’s people who speak about it often[…] I don’t find pride a useful emotion. I just come from a different perspective, I find that people are just deeply, deeply flawed[…] Shame is a productive thing to create change.
LC: I’ve never, ever considered shame to be a positive emotion.
ZS: to be shameless is to be a very, very dangerous thing. Our president in America is a shameless person. It’s definitely a christian emotion, and that’s why it’s so out of fashion. But I always thought it quite productive in the gospels, the idea that you are entirely in sin. I always assume that, because it’s almost always true!

New York, New York. November 2019.
A friend invites me to a show where a cadre of activists belt and jiggle in the ugly face of capitalism, big pharma, Chase bank, hate in all forms… His husband is in the choir, they are electric, alive, beaming forward.
“This is all well and good. But it’s shame that gets the job done,” someone says to their friend.

Falls Church, Virginia; Fairfax, Virginia; Annandale, New Jersey; High Bridge, New Jersey; Rock Hall, Maryland; Fairfax, Virginia. 1967-2019.
There is part of me always there, in
the sinew I cannot chew, in
the harmonies I cannot muster, in
the better word I cannot tackle, in
the waters I cannot breach, in
each draw of insulin and mistaken diagnosis, in
the pews.
“What is seen is transitory, what is unseen is eternal.
All rise.”

America. 2020.
There is reverence to shame. The past is stunned, and maybe, with each bronze toppled and window smashed, at least it can be redirected.

It is now emanating in direct Janusian contrast to whatever lightness there was, for better or worse.