Like Saccharin

More wine, more ignorant bliss, the weekend passes in a tumult of nausea and you watch yourself from two feet over, amazed at the car crash in action. By Sunday, you cannot sleep but you cannot leave the bed, you starve but cannot eat, you toss between fits of apathy and waves of angst, it is not pretty. The number of toothbrushes in the bathroom has changed. The plants on the windowsill have gone wild; it is a jungle, and you no longer need to look straight into the lives of your neighbors across the street.

I tire of writing in the first person, but I cannot be with others for more than little moments at a time or I implode, wither, and then what else is there to say. I imagine you understand. A giant tome of Pushcart-prized short stories simmers through my line of vision. They all describe the world, they all speak of third person and scenery details, but I pick them apart ruthlessly to give myself a break. It doesn't help. Outside, it rains: a welcome rain, kind. The screams of amusement park visitors flies across the water. The wind must be just right. Tomorrow is Monday, again.

The world keeps spinning.
What are you going to do about it?

of You

Write something happy, she says. When you write happy things, I print them out and put them on my message board. I would love to oblige, but where is the glittering rainbow, in all this Normality?

Another voice comes down the line, says that's what we do. We endure this monotony for one instant of magic, and I suppose she is right. It just seems there was more magic to be had, previously. I refuse to believe this is age, or that was naïvite, that we are victims of insight and no more early mornings of sunrise and giggles are to be had. I refuse to believe we are too old to be blown away.

The bird cherries bloom, the trees have exploded and the air is thick with sweet smells, it is overwhelming. My heels click, click all along the quiet side-streets, Saturday night and it ends too early, too according to plan. I walk past office windows: publishers, artists, photographers, entrepreneurs. There is a life out there for the taking, and I am tempted to accept that which is easily given, but I must not.

A fire burns inside you unwilling to accept complacency and comfort. Let it burn, to the ground.
The fireworks will catch up,
eventually.

Independence Day

Too much wine, too much everything, she fed me water until I could stand straight but my eyes would not follow suit. Finally making my way home and if this was New York I would be hailing a cab faster than I could fall off this curb but none were to be had. The last steps up the hill impossible; the park around the church was quiet where just hours before we were packed like sardines staring into the sun.

Things end, eventually but never gracefully. It makes sense, she said at my declaration, you're going to New York and isn't this what you do. Realizing that when I ended it with her that was exactly what lay at my feet. I amass this rubble around me and climax at leaving it all behind. Clean floors. Clean slates.I fought so hard to find a way out, only to realize the drug of staying in was stronger.

Ticket sales
are
up.

Yet.

What have I done? He can't be more than 22. We laughed at the bar, but her face was tinged with shame over what Life had become. When I was 22, what hadn't I done?

I stared into the corners and thought of 22. Of that summer I spent in an unknown bedroom with white walls because his face reminded me of you, and still the mornings showed me nothing else did. All these years later, your eyes still break my heart. We didn't want to leave the bar.

The doors closed behind us, and there was just a flicker of light at the horizon. The cherry tree blossoms had that scent about them, the air chilly but hopeful. Another day beckons.

We still don't spend our mornings
within the same walls.
I still spend my nights wishing we did.

Anew

The apartment lies silent, spotless. I daren't so much as move, for fear of disturbing the impeccable cleanliness, for ruining the priceless moment of a brand new start. May settles in my chest, and I dare to see an entire summer stretch for miles ahead; perhaps there will be more sun, yet. Two years ago I came to this city--it was such a warm summer that year, so beautiful--and the streets were so crooked, it hurt just to breathe. Two years later, and I have plants on the windowsills, I have family tucked away on the islands. Two years later and, on cue, my bags await their time to be packed.

Are you even capable of having a home? he asks, and I know the question is honest. Well-rehearsed answers make their way into the ether, but the truth is I am as homeless now as I was at 16 and it begins to dawn on me that this is my life. I feel as at home in an airport as I do behind this door that doesn't even have my name on it. I convince myself that one more leap will scratch the itch out for good, but everyone knows it's a joke and I'm forever chasing rainbows. I spent the weekend alone but hallucinated moving shadows in the corner of my eye. Nothing was there when I turned.

Your face came on the screen today, your voice, it all felt the same. The stubborn pieces of times past jabbed at my insides until memories flooded back and filled every resting cavity. There was a time I believed we could walk the same road. But you merely left a ghost in the streets and they only ever run in circles.

My greatest fear is that I'm doing the very same.

Ascension

My mind repeats itself like a broken record, filled with nothing but sunshine and blossoms, and I haven't the heart to lift the needle and make it move on. For a few short days, the world is reborn, and the summer air swirls through me until I am unable to speak of anything else. I saw you in the park one morning, nearly close enough to touch. I told the children the names of flowers, we touched the soft, soft leaves, and it could have just been a trick of the lights.

I'm lying on the couch panicking over my life and what's to become of it, she writes and how I know the feeling. But Brooklyn sat on a chair in my apartment this week and it reminded me I have a home, I have a place that is mine to return to, I have a purpose that I never fulfilled but which still awaits. Those long winter months, those dead branches and impenetrable sludge, they do their damndest to make you forget, to make you lose your foothold. But if you wake up panting on the shoreline, and it turns out to be May, then it means you survived. It means you are not lost at sea. And you have not forgotten.

I look at the devastation that is my apartment, my mind, my heart, my life. It's just a matter of beginning somewhere, of sorting through the rubble, and not finishing till you're done.

20:56

You turn your back for just a second, and then it's happened. Suddenly the world is green, and warm, and alive. Suddenly scarves and jackets cling to your steaming skin, and there's a smile on peoples' faces you have not seen in months. The cherry trees bloom, the magnolias, the daffodils. Trees that you saw barren just yesterday sprout dewy clusters of baby leaves; the city shimmers in chartreuse.

I peeled off layers of warm winter clothing, pulled out a blanket from deep within the closet's back shelves. We packed the cups, the wine, the food, the sunglasses and headed to the church at the top of the hill, to the golden spot at the peak of the city that last would see the sun set. We milled among the hundreds, buried ourselves in the burgeoning grass, stared straight into the sun, and we laughed.

That this is what comes, after all those months of perpetual darkness and death. I don't want to say it's worth it... but it's hard not to, she said. I rolled another cigarette, breathed the smoke and heat and spring deep into my lungs, felt the panic in my gut evaporate into the breeze. The mess inside remains.

But for this one sweet moment,
it is powerless.