BPR 53 | 2026
I came to the city so I could see gold. When I arrived though, the leaves were gold, too, and I became confused. I called the front desk four times and Angel answered each time. By the third call, he ended with talk soon. In the morning, a different man answered and I burst into tears. On 53rd Street, small children kept on running into me. A father yelled so loudly at the boy on the scooter that I thought he knew I was carrying death on my back. By the time I arrived at the museum, there was a long line. The bald man in front of me kept turning around to look at me. I could tell by his forehead that he could hurt me. When I finally found the room, I was the only one in there. Everyone else was below me, in the Picasso room. While I stared at the gold rectangles, two attendants talked about whether to work overtime and get paid time and a half. I wanted to tell them that there’s no such thing as time, just time and a half. Sometime in the night, Etel Adnan had died. I had just seen her paintings the day before. The crowds were large and I wondered whether our looking had accelerated her death. When I took a photo of Agnes’s piece, I saw my dark reflection on the gold. I started counting the grids but the bald man came up next to me. Suddenly there were two dark shadows on the gold. I asked him to step away but when he said, No, it was Agnes’s voice.
from With My Back to the World, FSG, 2024