handstands

i should be honest more often.
we walk through Washington Square Park
and dusk is blue today. i say 
that i'm glad i didn't go here for
college, that i would be so caught
up in the city. we watch three people
tossing a frisbee in a triangle.
the grass is scraggly, recovering 
from winter. i don't meant that though,
i wish i had moved to the city earlier.
i remember being eighteen and telling
an old boyfriend that i needed to go,
that i just needed to go and that we
would make the distance between us work.
we pulled up Google maps and saw the three
hours between us. i picked a closer 
school to home because of him.
i've tried several times to teach
myself how to do a handstand and 
none of them have worked out.
i get close, posed against a wall,
hands gripping at the carpet.
i might change my life if i could,
not because i don't like my life now, 
but because i'm prone to regret and nostalgia.
we stand there in front of the arch
at Washington Square Park and i imagine
a person big enough to stand in it:
a great big doorway. i think 
of all the people who we watched 
stepping out of their houses and
you saying, "look they're leaving
their houses! they here here!"
all the different types of doors:
white painted and brass door knobs,
rusted edges and silver hinged, and
the glass door lobbies with doormen 
i imagine trying to do a handstand
in the archway of a door to our 
apartment in the village. i imagine
trying to do a handstand in the 
Arch at Washington Square Park.
maybe i would be in the background
of some passing tourist's photograph.
they might assume i'm a local
because of the unabashed strangeness 
of my handstand, pointing to me
years later, my body clear against
the blue dusk, and wondering, "what kind
of life do you think he has?"