War rages on, is it your war now that you've joined the side of the Righteous? Do you take on the sins of the father when you marry the son? The questions are too big to consider yet, you scrub the shelves in your fridge instead and hold out for Daylight Saving time in the morning. Spring forward. Spring forward.
If you say it enough it sounds like an oath.
In a moment, everything changes. A letter of acceptance, a door opening. This wasn't how you thought this life would go, but can't that be said for anything. You look back at the winding paths behind you, how each jump, each stumble led you here. There's no explaining it, and perhaps you shouldn't try. She asks you about books and you find yourself tingle, find your eyes light up to get all the words out as fast as you can. There's something there.
There's something there.
America, I've given you all, and now here we are. America, we didn't always choose each other but we always came back. It's a strange, dark time to hold ceremony, but perhaps that's exactly why we should do it.
Perhaps the darkness is not what makes us human
but celebrations in the face it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
