Canyon

You start the climb into the mountains like so many times before, hairpin turns you could do blindfolded, traffic unusually heavy on the other side of the railing. As your elevation builds, the rain turns to sleet turns to snow, how was it spring just days ago? You played baseball in a t-shirt, you're sure of it, but that memory is gone now. In Texas, they close the airspace and open it again, another memory made questionable. What you think you saw, you did not see, move along. 

By morning, the finest layer of white lingers across the fields, while raindrops dance in puddles around it, the mountains obscured by lingering cloud cover. It's not enough to save the desert come summer. 

It turns out to be too hard, as we age, to know what's the right move. Stay in the boiling pot, hope the waters recede? Cut your losses and build something new? They didn't teach you this in school. Your parents never told you all your dreams might one day be quashed. 

The cloud cover descends into the valley. The Answers are hard to come by. It isn't over till it's over. 

West

Early morning flight, all your habits and routines fly out the window. Stand shivering at a shuttle stop in New Jersey, how different the world at an hour when everything is still. I fall asleep as soon as the plane takes off, wake up in another realm, life is strange and comes to you in unexpected turns sometimes. There's still no update from the immigration officer, still no new stamps in your certificate of existence. You wonder what it'll mean. You try not to wonder too much or it would be all you'd do. 

After days of mild sunshine, a snow storm moves into the mountains. The world is upside down. The temperature drops, you wrap yourself in extra layers. It's only February. 

There's much work left to till Spring. 

Stranger

The afternoon disappears in a haze. I find myself at the old bookstore, in a neighborhood where I used to live, find myself sinking into a thick leather armchair that reminds me that if I am not allowed in this country, I am always right in this town. 

A woman next to me offers to give me a tarot reading, like she can sense the electricity buzzing around my head. I say no. The attractive man across from me looks terrified, but processes slowly before declining. The last girl at the table says yes; we all listen in to the promises of her future. I'm getting the strong feeling that you should go for it, says the woman. 

I wonder if nonsense of this moment could lead to a meet-cute with the attractive man, his squinting eyes like a secret to unwrap. But he doesn't see the electricity either, doesn't pick up the tendrils I'm letting out into the Universe. I wonder how loud I have to vibrate for the Universe to catch up, for people to catch on, and then I hear him ask me if he's seen me here before. The Universe giggles in my direction. 

At last I walk out of the bookstore, a giggle and a half but no number in my pocket, reminded that attractive doesn't make up for a brain you don't want to unwrap, that a sense of humor would have made him look good not just today but in 50 years. My friend awaits. A cocktail awaits. Don't you understand I have pockets full of magic, I cannot wait for you

to catch up. 

Ellis Island

So many doors, so many mazes to get where you are going. You wait for longer than you thought you would before you are led into the little room. It all happens so fast you barely have time to be scared anymore. When it’s over, she smiles and says it all went so well and you breathe a sigh of relief until she says But I cannot make a decision right now. In 1999 you drove too fast and there’s no way to prove that that’s all it was. 

Back outside all the doors, in the cold winter wind, a cop says I see you smilin all the way up the block, and you don’t know if you should tell him all tha passed in the moments before you met him. 

Life is strange, and long, and short all at once. One step at a time. A friend calls and asks if you’ll meet for lunch. Says we’ll go somewhere with strong drinks. At the end of the day, your pockets are full of gifts. 

Snap

I'm deep in shivasana when I hear it. Slow breaths, muscles settling and letting go of the day, a peaceful winding down to sleep. Silence. 

And then, for just a second, a sharp sound not afforded the padding of traveling in through the windows. Something from within the walls. Just that quick snap, nothing else, no lingering sensation. Something was here, now it is not. 

I close out my reverie, gather my being inside my body again. Walk to the kitchen, unthinking. 

In the corner of the room, in the little gap between the kitchen counter and the crooked wall, a mouse trap lies sideways, released. The trespasser perfectly captured in a square, its soft body draped across the pad, eyes wide, pleading, its long tail still. A New Yorker is forever at war with the mouse, but it is no less of a life, no less of a heartache to witness the results of battle. The death quiets me. 

As it should. 

Cygnes

A quiet day passes. Not even the mouses stirs, and you wonder what else you should be doing. The appointment in the calendar continues to wave its flags in your direction, you weave around it like a cat on a hot tin roof, never not aware it's there. 

The story begins to fall apart at your fingertips, you question your abilities, the youth in your veins. It's been too many years since everything seemed possible. 

You've reached a point where all you aim to do is 
survive. 

Slush

A page turns in the almanac, a new month, a step closer to spring. The snow recedes from the flower pot on the fire escape, the small body of a dead mouse resurfacing, reminding itself to you. Life is so frail, so fleeting, when you see it on the other side. Death doesn't scare you so much as soften you. There's a gift in there, perhaps, but it is hard to look directly at it. 

The week ahead intimidates you. There's a date in the calendar, an appointment in the books, and you cannot look away from it, cannot distract yourself with tasks closer at hand. There may be no way around it. The only way out is through. 

You were raised to know right from wrong, and to do the right. That doesn't go away just because the woods get dark. You were raised in the woods, raised to know there was always a way out. You see a new year open up before you, see opportunity and potential in the paperweights of the world, see the sheets of paper unravel and fly around you. There's a surrealist air to the brush strokes, a Daliesque quality to your tumble down the rabbit hole. All your best stories were written in madness, in wonder. Why should this year be any different? 

The remaining mouse scampers across the kitchen floor while you sleep. 

If you didn't know better, you'd think he was inviting you along.