new york city (friday night)

Had dinner this evening with an old friend, a magnificent woman, a practically sister known and held dear since time immemorial.

She is roughing it these days. Dark circles and sharp tones betray the exhaustion she is too depleted, too proud, to own.

We ate expensive pizza and drank cheap wine on this comfortably warm August night, and made our way to a nearby Chelsea bar patronized mostly by warring girls throwing political views (Sandra Fluke: virgin or whore? Of course I dove right in) and cute Irish bartenders asking our names.

We talked about work woes and family woes and the trials and tribulations of being young or not so young and alone in this city, in the greater world, in this life.

I found myself wanting to give her Sarah, gift wrapped and glowing in white tissue paper, welcoming and life-saving and warm, but instead I struggled to even really advocate therapy from this place of constant imperfection, and so I hugged her goodnight and came home.