Oh My Sweet

A foghorn rings out in the night, says Even though you cannot see me, I am here. You think it's a worthwhile sentiment. Children who've never known a life without you circle past your arms, there was a time when your days were filled with children's laughter and now instead you have carpal tunnel tired eyes from days full of screens. Surely we were meant for other things.

The weather turns, you pull winter coats and thick tights back out of the storage boxes. April is fickle, the present is fickle, all you have is these grains of sand in your hand, everything else is fleeting and can be taken from you. You used to think you had stories to tell, what are you doing with your time? Everything else can be taken from you. 

Let this be the thing you can 
give.  

Memorial Sloane Kettering

Drop me at the ER entrance, you tell the driver, impatient on the Upper East Side. You don't love a hospital, but you don't fear it so much, anymore. We've been here before. You like to think you've gotten better at some things in life. 

When your grandmother forgot your name and couldn't go outside anymore, did you not walk her down the hospital corridors looking at paintings and pretending you were at an art gallery? She asked you to stop at a window, said the light is so special here up north, and you nodded even though you were nowhere near the polar village where she grew up. It really is, you said, and then she called you by your mother's name. 

I overstayed visiting hours and walked out of her room wrung dry. The corridor was quiet, dark after hours. The nurses kept a dinner tray for me, told me to sit down and eat a bit before I left. Told me there was no rush. Hospitals are sterile mazes of inexplicable events, but there's a warmth in the walls, a suspension of reality that carries you through. I keep my fingers crossed some of that air will come to 67th street. The year lies long ahead, but the cherry trees are in blossom and the evenings are mild. He returns to bed, takes heavy breaths into the future, you learn a little more about yourself each time the world around you shudders. 

There's no telling what else
lies ahead.  

This Is What Happens In May

Somewhere outside of Salt Lake City, you tell him that I-80 runs clear to the East Coast and not twelve hours later there you are, driving your little SAAB to the end of its line, before the lanes merge into I-95 and onto the George Washington Bridge into Manhattan. I have walked clear across this country I have seen its wonders and I have stayed. Don't forget that when you doubt your ability to commit to what you love, don't forget that when you think your roots run shallow and unreliable. 

Returning to the office after a week in outer space is a bizarre act of contortion. My mind is all words, my body is all song, billable hours seem about as relevant as raincoats in the desert, why would I spend my time in front of this machine when the cherry trees are in bloom outside the window? 

I keep thinking my spring itch is part of the mental illnesses that wrap themselves along my insides, that my constant running is a symptom of a bone break that never set properly, but what if it isn't? What if this is just another way to be, is just one life like any other and the best thing you can do is not to fight it, but to live it?

It's so novel a concept I can't quite grasp it. What if you are fine the way you are, and you just have to find the right stove for your pot to cook?  

What if you are fine the way you are?

May delights in the periphery. 

Red Eye

It's been a while since I came to the gate at this hour, the familiar motions of a red eye across the continent, the slight ache at contorting oneself into uncomfortable hours to save a few bucks and a day. Revel in extra hours of airport limbo, you love that liminal space where nothing matters and feelings get distilled into drifting announcements, like harmless curiosities you can study from a safe distance. I forgot my eye mask, my ear plugs, it's been too long since I embarked on such a sleep. Maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe nothing matters. It's nearly May, you are invincible. At the other end of the flight, your dearest friends take on another day of poison in weary veins. Maybe you can share some of your matter with them. It's nearly May, you are indefatigable. There was a time I thought I couldn't live anymore but I don't know that time now, don't understand its conviction. The blessing lies in not knowing that darkness when you're bathing in light. One more hour till boarding. A few more hours till home. 

The blessings are too many to count. 

But it doesn't stop you from trying.  

Hózhó

In the middle of the desert, a sandstone hut is dug into the earth. You weave through buttes and mesas, past spring blooms carpeting the red earth and dress against the evening chill. Roll out sheepskin, go to sleep in the absolute silence of a land beyond lands, there's no way to keep from platitudes. By morning, the blanket of stars give way to a sunrise beyond the eastern mountains, but you cannot imagine what it might be like to grow up thinking this was the entire reaches of the world. He says he knows where his umbilical cord lays buries, he knows where his soul connects to the earth. You think you haven't a clue where you belong, and you are no longer worried about it. We make our own connections, we make our own hózhó. You cannot go finding yourself in someone else's beauty. 

Cannot steal a home and make it yours.  

Bears Ears

Cross a ridge and step into a different eon, time travel in the blink of an eye. The desert continues to amaze, you tell him you see a punishing landscape, he says this is lush, this is full of food and life. You pinch sage brush between your fingers and the air comes alive. 

Later, outside the fancy ecolodge they built in the gulch, you sit in Adirondack chairs along the dark side of the building, looking at the night sky. You see a shooting star and do t tell him, it is yours alone. Don’t make wishes, only promises, only exclamations of gratitude. The universe is neverending in both space and time, you are insignificant in comparison. 

That is the gift. 

You keep it wrapped. Bring it home. Revel in the magic inside. 

Dine'

You don't write, though you should be writing. Your days are all airplanes and road trips, all sunshine and changing seasons, are fodder for stories. Spring explodes around you and you drive ever south, into Red Rock Country, into a back country that feels like it's written into your spine though it is not your heritage. He looks out over the buttes and mesas, the hundred-mile valleys, says this is where my people come from, this is where my art begins. She weaves tales of her people into the tapestry, but says there are stories she cannot tell us. They are not for the summer season, she says, as explanation. He tells us of a tornado that pullled through a few years ago and says that when he asked his family elders, they simply said, That is where They walk and left it at that. 

How can I write when stories like that are being told around me? I am all ears, no voice now. There is no money in my account but am I not on the road, am I not working in ways I neved dreamed possible before? 

It all crumbles around us. Best enjoy the crumbs.