Chuppah

It's the part where they are hoisted into the air on chairs, when the music gets frenetic and the celebrations peak, when you think your own fears would not endure this sort of elation, that's the part you like the least. Maybe only because it does not bring you the sort of joy it's supposed to, and it's the discrepancy that chafes. 

The part you like the most is when you sweet talk the house manager into letting you take a bouquet off one of the tables, and you walk home through Red Hook in canvas shoes with an explosion of flowers in your hands. 

Your doctor looks you over, says you look good but you know she sees only ligaments and veins, only charts for an age group you have yet to reconcile with. There's a group of young girls in the corner of your writing bar who come in to knit together, and you adore them. You, too, decided Mondays were meant for creative corners. The bartender only wants to talk about Europe trips. She scowls every time a new patron enters the bar. You adore her. The youths only order Diet Cokes or bitters and soda. It's hard not to complain about the generations that come after. 

It's sunny out, it's warm out, the people of New York peel the layers off themselves and emerge with smiles from the wreckage. In like a lion, out like a lamb. Everything happens too fast. 

The part you like the most
is the one where you're around to see it.  

Sweep

There's a stillness in the after, a sort of grace in accomplishment. You wake early, lighter, out of dreams of moving. Your cousin says maybe she was wrong and spring was the answer all along, somehow her illness faded with the coming of sunlight. You relish her relief. Across the river, a darkness has rolled in that the seasons cannot excise. Across the ocean, a war bellows, a tale as old as time. 

Somehow, we live our little lives in the immense tornado of the big picture. People have children in the middle of war, people fall in love in the middle of collapse. They call to say he proposed on the other side of the world and their joy is so simple, when nothing else is. 

You feel yourself returning to the world. To life. You know May waits around the corner, for once you believe it will come.  Everything is falling apart, except it isn't. Not everything. 

The four-leaf clovers are just about to sprout.  

Step

All day, mired in deductions and expenses, a mind wrapped tight in focus, a spring sun climbing higher yet across the sky. Only an hour's break between. In the old days, you would've laced your shoes, would've taken the chance to unwind your strangled thoughts, would've reveled in the sunlight along the water. 

The thing with old days and new days is
they're all a figment of our imagination. 

The thing is if what you want to do is lace your shoes and 
let your feet think for you, 
you still can. 

So I did.  

En:dure

Your flight leaves at 7 a.m., he says. I couldn't figure out how to add a bag. You take a deep breath, run through the annoyances you needn't say and ignore the news that tell you security lines are beyond the pale. What is reality, when there is starlight and happenstance out there? When there is whimsy and surprise? 

You speak clearly into the room that you haven't an outlet, stand impatient in the midst of your shortcoming and haven't yet reached the problem-solving stage when he fixes it for you. Just like that. Sometimes you think being seen is the greatest gift we can give each other. She runs into the bar to for an encouraging hug, before it's time to go home and tell the children. We do not use words like stages, like prognosis, like five-year-survival rate, but they sit at the back of your throat like a vise regardless. There's a weight in your belly that you do not think you can get rid of now, in my dreams I take care of babies and puppies but fall down steep cliffs, the symbolism hits you over the head, she writes from across the Atlantic to say she is bed ridden and can't remember how to breathe. 

We are on our last legs, March. We are doing what we can, but we are at the end of our carefully tied strings, please. Give us one foothold at the edge of this cliff, please, give us one solid push onto dry land. 

The heart breaks and breaks 
and breaks and breaks and

one day surely 
you'll come out alive. 

 

Strike

We're back on the picket lines tomorrow at nine, he says, closing his bar tab, so this is the only drink I'm allowed today. The bartender sticks a lime in it, grumbles at the service, rolls her eyes in your direction as another group comes in. Mondays were not meant for working, she seems to say, as she makes another batch of negronis. 

You make eyes at the striking barfly, wonder what else he could tell you if given the time, wonder what else you could teach him under union rules. He waxes on about negotiations and there's a glimmer in his eyes that you think could be better spent elsewhere, you are no good to anyone in this March gloom, useless before spring bursts into your fingertips, you do not remember how to bring a person home (metaphorically). You wish him luck, turn back to the bartender, commiserate over the weight of the world. 

Once spring bursts into my fingertips, 
you whisper to yourself, 
once life returns to these frozen rivers in my veins,
I will show you a match, 

I will show you a strike 
to start a
fire. 

Snaps

Descend the stairs to an East Village basement, leave the spring air behind – reluctant – greet new faces like old friends, you're not sure you put your own face on right, or chose the right one for the occasion. That's the problem with masks, you have to know which one you're wearing. Snaps for the readers though you didn't feel their heartbeat, you wonder in amazement at these groups of writers who want to venture into the world, who want to see their audience react to their turns of phrase. You only ever wanted to be alone with words, community sullies the fantasy you think. This is not the moment to air such a grievance. 

Later, on Second Avenue, gentle spring rain on warm concrete sidewalk, little glimpses of poetry remind themselves to me I have

sunk so many years into these streets allowed
so much love to fill the cracks in the side walk I am
not sorry

Because when I stumble these streets now
the magic we built together is what
lifts me up and

carries me home. 

Hum

Sunset over the Manhattan skyline, you sit in a 21st-floor office and watch the golden light illuminate the skyscrapers. Remember a Port Authority office where you got no work done for all the staring across rooftops you did. It's been too long. Here is my city. This is what you came for, this is the lifeblood that beats inside you, steady, joyous. 

You stand on the subway platform feeling alive, it pulses through you, sets the misaligned boulders straight, how simple everything when the answers are right. You knew that. You had only forgotten. We are not as broken as we think.

It's only, 
life gets in the way
of living.