MYSTIC HUSTLER — ERIKA VEURINK
/Every morning I face my window overlooking Times Square in just a thong and release one thing I don’t need to carry. On my toes, arms outstretched, I open myself to the universe. My husband can’t help but put down his work phone and watch. I roll my head back so I’m facing the ceiling. I spin slowly, ignoring gawking, ant tourists. “Angelic,” he said once. Usually, he mutters, “Jesus Christ.”
My husband is desperate to finalize the divorce. He hates my newfound spirituality. He hates that I was having an affair with our doorman and blames it on my awakening. People think that because I have the body of a woman and the face of a girl I can’t have a transcendent soul. And people think that someone with a transcendent soul should be bound to traditional definitions of marriage. It’s not my fault my love is cosmic.
I’ve adjusted my sleep schedule to avoid his negativity. I put on false eyelashes at night when he gets home. I walk the empty streets gripping mace and prayer beads. I’m hunting for signs. I recite prayers I’ve screenshotted from daily meditations. I read them over fountains and ATMs, planting positivity. I’m a mystic hustler. Everyone is a child of God. My teachers are the beggars, the ads on top of taxis, the posters taped to streetlights that ask, “Do you need freedom?” They all speak to me. And I listen.
Last night, the sky was green with pollution. The street drains buzzed with feral trash and neon liquids. I ignored a call I knew was from my husband or the doorman. I held my inhale and then released. I was the kids lighting a joint under scaffolding. No, I was the stack of day-old magazines a rat was climbing. Actually, I was floating above them, like the invisible cell tower connection—watching, hoping, knowing, awakening.
Erika Veurink is a writer living in Brooklyn by way of Iowa. She is receiving her MFA from Bennington College. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Entropy, Ghost City Press, Hobart, Literary North, Midwest Review, x-r-a-y, and elsewhere.
