Interior Landscape: 6:00 a.m.
- Interior Landscape:6:00 a.m.
Before I open my eyes,breathe in the soiled airfrom the construction site across the street,before I know whether it's cold or damp, or bright,recall whether I have attended to my duties—before I know if I am awake or in dream,and whether the chorus of morning birdsis menacing or clairvoyant,before I rise to stretch, wipe the sleepfrom my eyes, collect the newspaper,before I fear the fateof our children, the crumblingof democracy like the bricks of a buildinggiving way over the weight of its neglect,and the rotting seams of its history,before I pass, as I always do,on my circuitous route to the train,the for-rent signs on the store frontson Broadway, the homeless man in dirty rags who sleepsabove the suicide grate (what are his thoughts, hopes,prayers) and the one who makes his bedon the concrete outside Victoria's Secretwith his teeth rotted out and licein his hair. Before I worry about addiction,and the rangy teenage girl and her soulful dog sitting outside Pretwhere I get my coffee with her sign made from a cardboard box—please help—before I fret about money, getting old, my mother's dementia,and how it will manifest, the tree rottingoutside our building, starving deer and wild coyotesin the park, soot falling [End Page 62] on the vibrant tulips,before I ponder good and evil,and the prevailing systems of our freedoms,before I check on the sleepers in other roomsand the one I neglected,I rise, look at my face in the mirrorand pinch the color back into my fragile, human skin. [End Page 63]
Jill Bialosky's newest memoir is Poetry Will Save Your Life. She is the author of four acclaimed collections of poetry, most recently, The Players; three critically acclaimed novels, most recently, The Prize; and a New York Times bestselling memoir History of a Suicide: My Sister's Unfinished Life. Her poems and essays have appeared in the New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, O Magazine, Harvard Review, and Paris Review, among others. She coedited with Helen Schulman the anthology, Wanting a Child. She is an executive editor and vice president at W. W. Norton & Company. In 2014 she was honored by the Poetry Society of America for her distinguished contribution to poetry.
