In Harlem

It takes an hour and a half just to arrive at her door. In you home country that would put you on the other coast. But it doesn’t matter because she used to live on this country’s other coast and that’s a whole space ride to reach. You delight at returns, see the sprouts in the tree wells of Wall Street, see the sun beam on the East River. So much of life beats you to a pulp, makes you question why you carry on, but the suddenly the sun shines, suddenly your people are only an hour and a half away on the A train and you think loneliness is a multi-faceted beast and there are parts to its spectrum that don’t hit you, that you have shielded yourself against through diligent work and tending your garden of wealth. 

You are alone in all the ways except the ones you aren’t. 

And soon the sun will return to remind you. 

Crackle

I set another trap in the kitchen, walk away to wait quietly on the other side of the wall. When the snap comes I remain, unwilling to see the spoils left behind. A death rattle rolls down the corridor, my cruelty at odds with my sense of reason. 

The days, they pass so quickly now. Snow melting, March approaching, all the days are work, something is not adding up but subtracting down. You realize most people live their lives like this. 

But you were promised long ago
that you were not like most people

so the poem rings hollow
in your ears.  

Here

It snows again, a thin layer of white spread across the ice of yesterday's melt. Treacherous, inviting, disheartening. February grinds, it's only doing its job, two years ago you fell asleep to the sound of hippos trudging around the Masai Mara but you're stuck somehow, you haven't stretched your limbs properly since. Wriggling inside the safe spaces only gets you so much further. But spring will come, spring will come, and the itch will return to you. He writes to ask if you'd come with him, write a story or two, you'll barely break even but you weren't here to make money, clearly. 

It's snowing now, but it will not always. It's winter now, but one day you'll itch for the road, and the most beautiful gift you've ever been given 

is that the road always rises up 
to meet you

if only you take the step.  

Post

The day after the storm always feels the same, always this first hesitant step blinking into the morning, navigating the remains of what's been. The sun is bright, the crosswalks a minefield. Your body sore in strange places from shoveling and shuffling, yet you feel brand new. Talk to strangers in the street, someone warns you about an icy spot, someone laughs about the joy of their dog in the snow drifts. You do not take this air for granted. A year ago you were trying to die; two years ago you were looking at giraffes on a mountain slope in Kenya. 

There is no way to predict your life before it happens. 

 

Blizzard

It's the first blizzard in ten years, the mayor says. You look back to remember but find that you'd escaped the city for unpronounceable upstate hamlets, remember how the floor creaked as you considered the distance between hearts. It feels like so many lifetimes ago. 

You wake up early, too early, the radiators heaving with responsibility, you have to open all the windows, turn on the fan, throw your covers aside. An old routine. Your windows are bright white, a wall of snow, you can't be mad about such a blissful reminder that we are only very small in the face of something very big. The snow rises as it falls, a delicate dance of giant flakes, accompanied by the soundtrack of shovels in the street. We are reduced to our physical bodies. Late last night, I trekked out into it, couldn't miss the chance at feeling myself dissolved into tha air. A perfect crunch under my feet, a stillness that only arrives with snow, the sudden droppping of masks between strangers. Like recharging a self that grew up in this, that's been too urbanized to seek it out but that knows deep down this is what made you. 

I cannot help but think it's time for the country again.  

Endure

For a moment, the sun breaks through. It stops you in the tracks of a gravel parking lot near the warehouses on the water, you close your eyes and let it beam in through your skin. Like you're nothing more than a machine, recharging. They say a snowstorm is on its way. Say it'll bury the city. You feel your battery draining. Say it's only February quietly in your head, hoping the mantra will ward off the evils. 

You're so close to sunshine, now, to spring and sprouts and life the kind that grows from within. Just hold out a little longer, just put one foot in front of the other. Soon, all will be well. 

All you have to do is be alive to see it.  

Precipitate

A day slips through your fingers, they feel useless at the end of your arms, you had so much to prove and instead proved nothing. The notion makes you shrink inside yourself, like plastic wrap under heat, you wrinkle and contort and end up unrecognizable to yourself. My head hurts. Outside the window, it rains all day, the heat is off and you feel a chill for the first time all winter. There's a gratitude in it if you will. 

(and you have to, you have to. What else can you do with useless days but fill them with gratitude, but allow yourself grace. It is only February, it is only this rain, tomorrow there will be sunshine anew and you can make up for what you broke here. The sun sets so much later each day now, have you noticed?

Tomorrow there will be sunshine. Come back to me then.)