Front

Every time you think the skies begin to clear, a vengeful weather god snickers and sends a storm your way. There is no metaphor; it is thunder. You think to yourself how a few months ago, the sentiment would be reversed, how in illness you go looking for signs from the Universe, meaning in crystals, answers at the end of hypnosis, and now how easy it is to see the world for what it is. If you were never ill, you might not have had this imagination at all. 

If you were never ill, these stories might not have told themselves to you like they do, appearing like little gems in your periphery, creating worlds for you to step into and for just a moment forget the one in which your body is wasting away. 

Without this illness, would rain only ever be rain,
and never a whisper of magic?

Summer Skin

It stirs in you now, a process that cannot be stopped, a sprout emerging from the earth and unable to contain itself. I wake with a deep breath in my lung, I smile at strangers in the street, this morning I remembered, for a moment, what longing feels like and it jolted me like a burst of electricity. Do you remember how it felt to want to touch another person's lips so much that you thought you may explode?

May gasps with that feeling, out of breath with anticipation. Everything is about to start, everything is about to happen. 

For so many endless days I thought I didn't know what it was to want anything anymore, I didn't even have it in me to want to die. It's a strange illness, how it strangles your memory of who you are and why you are here. And when the illness recedes, and your self moves its jumble of suitcases and frantically packed plastic bags back into your chest, how clear it all is. 

You were there all along. 

This skin always fit you best.

Ends

She returns to the airport, bags full, heart kneaded. You drop her off and collapse on the couch, watching the hours while away but not unhappy about it. Sometimes we need to sit in silence to hear the things we said. 

The rain continued unabated the whole day, seemingly in agreement. Red Hook comes out of its shell, prepares for its season in the sun. You find homes on other shores. May itches in you like a seasonal allergy, a chronic condition you're in no rush to kick. 

I remember what it was like to want to kiss you. 

But not more than I remember how it feels
to have the road underneath your feet.

Screen

The rain hangs over the city like a threat that cannot quite commit. You get a reservation to an impossible restaurant, the last few hours trickle away and you wonder if you made the most of it, if you let something precious slip away. There was a time in this city when you thought maybe you could have everything, and the loss claws at your insides, but everything circles back when you live at the center of gravity. Good things are coming back. 

You will be ready when they do.

Forget-Me-Not

You hit the FDR at the very beginning inklings of rush hour traffic, a slow meander up the East River, a burgeoning irritation, a two-mile-an-hour crawl through the Bronx, but once you hit the Taconic, it's all winding roads and happy dances until cocktail hour. The dog greets you, their smiles greet you, the upstate is rainy and cold but yawns itself into sunshine by morning. You walk around barefoot, trying to grasp if grass under the soles of your feet can set something straight which has been crooked. 

There's a quiet peace which settles when you are out of your illnesses. A gentle acceptance and ability to breathe through the neighborhoods, a lightness. You wonder if people live their entire lives like this, but it's best not to think of it too long. A chef in Cold Spring says come stay for the month in August, and you start to pack your bags at the drop of a dime. 

Returning from illness is a reminder of all the things you could have been doing but haven't. It carries also the seed that there is time yet to do them. This is grace. 

The rest, it turns out, is up to you.

Of the Lights

You wake early, again, again, your spirit light, your mornings an exercise in hope. Get more done before nine than January you did in a day. You do not resent her, do not consider yourself above. There's a magnanimity that appears when your disease wastes away, a generosity of the heart that you miss when it is gone.You know the illness is a part of you, but this, this sunshine soul,feels like stepping into.a box that was tailor-made to fit your shape. This feels like everything aligned just so, stacking the rings of your wind pipe so that you can breathe again, as if for the first time in months. 

You waste no time in catching yourself up.  

New York beckons outside your window, summer beckons outside your window, at JFK airport a gate prepares to deliver your most precious cargo, I'm saving you a seat at our favorite restaurant, you know the one in the West Village with the tables squeezed so tightly together you weave your stories into the ones of the couple next to you, I''ll ask them to chill the wine for you, I'll ask them to make room for any tales you want to tell. Summer is ours now, New York and life. I took so long to get here I nearly forgot the way.

But all roads lead home,
if you let them.

Stars

The rain does one last lap around the bay, hides the highrises from the world in a drape of gray stuffing, washes the dusky streets in a cold wind. By morning, it's all gone. Blue sky the kind that pierces your eye, sunlight kissing your skin, the hope of the world again. The hours while away and you don't know how it happens, but you no longer have access to the darkness that would have you worry about it. 

The space it left behind has been filled with lilac scent and whimsy. 

I stuff my bags full, laugh as it spills over onto to the streets, into the arms of people I meet, over the words and creations I try so hard to bring to life. Little darling, it's been a long, cold, lonely winter. 

But you are here now,
and that has made all
the difference.