Fall

Suddenly swamped with work, I barely retain the energy to digest what little life I have. I rise in the morning, spend my days in another language and exhaust my energy playing catch and smoothing out the uneven edges of young souls having just arrived at Battery Park. For a short break, I walk along the water's edge and draw long breaths in confusion, before I return to my small space in the Village to meet a hundred different deadlines. I try to remember to shower, how to make time to smile. Suddenly desperate to learn how to stop time. Reeling from always being so many steps behind.

A story of fiction runs parallel to my life. Too many similarities, I feel trapped by its foreboding future, its inevitably unhappy ending. In my journal, I write, I fear I write my own death sentence. Realities swim sickenly around me; my sleep comes reluctantly and remains restless. I cannot tell myself and my stories apart. I said I'd sacrifice anything to go to New York and write; I sacrificed my health, my happiness, my future. Is this what you wanted, New York? Is this the tab I ran up?

Yesterday when I walked home, the Hudson River fresh air was too overwhelming, too violent, and I crossed over into TriBeCa to walk safely along Greenwich cobblestone home. It is a rough world out there. I needed my New York streets to ground me. In the West Village, the gingko leaves have turned, and on my street is now a long line of bright beacons, every tree a torch toward enlightenment. If I stay here much longer, I will waste away. If I leave, I will surely die.