Årsta

Oh how bright the sun today, we fought bravely at the outdoor café, Look! I'm sitting here without a jacket on! and no matter that we piled the blankets high and the coffee grew cold halfway through. Winter is far away yet, I laugh in its face and am invincible.

Nine floors up and the view tames the fiercest lion. The train there crossed the bridge, but pulling out of the south island tunnel was nothing like climbing the Williamsburg bridge. The unsullied houses made my heart sink. I read my manuscript, those dirtied crumpled pages, and they only remind me of things I am better off forgetting, how can I ever finish it when I cannot pull on those feelings again? If I sink in I may never be able to crawl out. I feel like I'm being judged by my bookshelf, she said, but I simply reveled in her collection, in how delicious titles taste when you read them like that, the reminder what it is to be devoured by literature. Words never fail, where life cannot compete.

I saw you tonight, and how comforting your voice, that smile in your eyes. I saw you so close, and yet you were endlessly far away. When I came home we spoke of impossibilities, how there are too many things to wish for. Life has a lot to live up to. Winter, when it comes, will be long.