Novel (unfinished)

I walked through New Orleans alone in July.
If the past couldn’t kill me
the heat wouldn’t either.
Every day I sat on a terrace
and read Capote’s ‘Answered Prayers’.
At the front desk a boy asked
how to pronounce my name
then said it correctly that night
in my room. “Why are you here?”
he asked. I didn’t know.
The TV was paused on a still
of a porn star’s face. A week before
I hadn’t shown up to dinner at Le Veau d’Or.
The best revenge is indifference,
though Capote would disagree.
“What did they expect?” he said once.
“Did all those people think
I was there just to entertain them?”
New Orleans felt dipped
in the religious incense of childhood.
I was waiting on some part of the spirit to return.
Convinced the next move
counted more than the last mistake,
much like who isn’t invited to a party
matters as much as who is. Or how
sometimes, in the corridors of time
connecting one act to another,
people need to believe you’re
whatever story keeps their own
lives intact. But I was free.
And the street musicians could see it.