Lift the Damn Thing

An icy rain smatters across the windowsills, each drop landing like nails on the surface. Of course it hurts for buds to burst. You cling to promises of spring but wake in anxiety and you don't know why. I dreamed you were near, and now you are not. Perhaps that is why. Perhaps love is why we ache, and is why we hesitate. He writes to say, don't come to England, it's to hard being poor here, and you wonder if he knows what it is to be poor in New York. Lateral moves, you think, and wonder what the point is to any of it. 

The bartender brings you snacks, buys you a beer, leaves you alone to your work. 

Of course it hurts for buds to burst.  That's why you hesitate. 

Until you don't.  

Steps

March. March. March. You whisper it to yourself like a promise, like it will bring the sprouts from the ground and the warmth to your breath. You stand at the ferry landing staring straight into the afternoon sunlight, feel your pale irises drink it in like a wanderer in the desert. I think we made it out alive, you say out loud into the space between your lungs, you know it's too soon, you know you need to knock on wood and spit in the street but you're brave now, you're stronger now than you've been in years, so much crumbles around you but you still have air in your lungs and as such you are already miles ahead of where you've been. 

The first step is always to survive. If you've gotten that far, you're practically halfway there. 

If you've gotten that far, 
all you've left to do is
thrive.  

Snowdrop

The snow recedes, takes dirt and fear and winter with it. The streets glitter with melt, I strain my neck across all of Central Park to find a snowdrop; they evade me. The fear remains, a little too much for my liking, how do I outrun what's been etched in my bones? I haven't learned the right ways to react to the ordinary. 

They say grief sits in you like an illness, and you know you carry the ache generations in the making. Back home, your father collapses under his on weight and you start to think he will never be well and perhaps he will drag the rest of you with him. You've spent a lifetime trying to keep people from anchoring to your drag. To what end? In the street, my car holds an unearned dent, a silent scratch. The Universe speaks and I wonder when I'll be ready

to listen.  

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.