13th Moon

So we were trying to decide what to do with our lives..? My sister's voice trails off. It's early Friday evening in the post-Christmas haze, and the little bar is nearly empty. We laugh at the notion; we never get anywhere. She orders another beer, and we talk inappropriate dreams and New Year's plans instead. I'll be in New York for a few days, you know, she says, as I stare at the Brooklyn Brewery taps and feel nothing. The city feels further away than ever. The world.

There is no sleep to be had. I spend my nights in alternate realities, broken characters playing out their turmoil on the screen and seeping into my bath water. They make my stomach hurt. I know I'm grasping at straws; I claw and plead, regardless. The same blood that has coursed through you for 30 years powers you still. It runs thick and dark, infected with years of fear and fervor, of terror and toxins and ugly secrets. The movies serve a welcome break, the relief of someone else's cancer. There was sun today, while I was hiding in my darkened office, there was sun. We haven't seen it in what seems like weeks.

Spring will bring us our lives back again.

You just make sure the one you get,
is the one you wanted, to begin with. 

Da Capo

The weathermen with their ominous prophecies again, they say the rain will freeze, they say the roads will kill us all, but I see the barren sidewalks and wear sneakers anyways, revel in the freedom. In the middle of the day, when the gravel is wet, I stretch my legs and take long, long steps and look strangers straight in the eye. Later, at night, the streets are all black ice and stray office rats shuffle carefully to safety. Calculate the cold feet and strained legs, wasn't it still worth it though for a moment's joy?

All day, my mind is words, is sentences crafting themselves and lying in wait to be written down, to find their fit, but how when that blank page rolls out in front of my eyes nothing right comes out. I pound at the piano for hours, forget the dinner on the stove, the furious energy makes me laugh as my stale fingers revive themselves in notes so often played that they fray at the edges. We crescendo according to direction, interpret sad words, glad words, break our fingertips at the fortissimo near the end and do not notice. An entire story told, an entire life lived in a few minutes, of somebody else's painting.

If only it were as easy
to interpret the tune
from within. 

Thaw

The snow is washed away in rain, the streets lie bare. People outside the corner bar mourn the loss, as I laugh through the puddles at their feet. It makes the nights darker, yes, but my feet feel safer on concrete, my body lands firmer on streets than on that white magic. The building grows quiet, finally, my mind begins to stir. It is too late for song; I plug in headphones and pound classical pieces into the piano until my fingers fail and my jaws are clenched tightly.

A letter appears in the sheet music piles, a crooked hand-writing, a companion through the years.
And there it is, how simple: an answer to the writhing questions in your gut.

This madness, Cajsa, 
this sadness, 
this overwhelming angst and self-abuse, 
they are You. 

It doesn't mean you cannot be happy
It doesn't mean there isn't method to the Madness. 

It only means now is not the time
to give up
to give in. 

It means
you bleed
with purpose.

Death to my Hometown

In search of comfort, all there is is death. He dies, slowly, but inevitably. I took the train out to the country, to see the town where she grew up. We drive the scenic route, see the worn little school where she asked a boy to be hers and the worn bigger school where no one wants to go any longer, but then neither did she. She shows me the room she tried rebelliously to claim in her youth and the mother she has since tried to leave behind. Her father grew up in this town, made his life in this town. Her mother came from the ends of the earth; this is what life makes of us. We drive across the water to the tiny cottage in the woods. When we each worked a 20-hour work week, she says, that was perfect. The next baby waits impatiently in the wings. The darkness claws at me and I long for my city street lights.

The well is deep; have you landed at the bottom yet? Are you scratching your fingers bloody against the brick, staring desperately at what must be up to see but the slightest sliver of light? Tomorrow I go to an office to pack up my things.

Tomorrow when you wake
I'll be on my way. 

Navidad

I wake up in a haze; it takes a while to get my bearings, figure out where I am. That's been happening a lot, lately. I drink too much; I don't think it's why. More families are created and announced, again those expectant faces on the screen, even though the paradisiacal internet café will not allow for voices. Overwhelmed, it seems impossible to leave now, their children are my children. These people are the bricks that build my life. I am so intent on destroying it.

There's more drinks, more company, more convoluted conversation in the night and everything twists like a vise. The motion crushes everything in its path. There's a deep gash in my index finger, it bleeds all morning, it was a silly slip of the hand, didn't my sister say these knives were dull, I ramble.

It's too much.
We can't blame the snow
for our permafrost.

Solstice

Another day where everything trembles. We go about preparing for the Christmas feast but a hangover tears at my seams and I spill gingersnaps all over her kitchen floor. How much truth was spoken in the late hours and there is still no explaining the gash in my hand. I go home exhausted, begin to scrub the corners; I say it is for Christmas but I'm only trying to avoid the cobwebs within, the cliché beats itself to a pulp right in front of me. I dreamed last night that I knew what it was to want to hurt you, but I cannot remember it now.

The darkness turned yesterday, could you feel it? Every day, now, is longer than the day before. You survived the slippery slope, you will survive many more to come even when you don't believe it. Hold my hand, stay under these covers, spring will come before we know it.

The blood that trickles from our wintery skin, will be replenished in time.

Mia Cruda Sorte

I never called your subject glib.

The woods transform, the streets. Their apartment is beautiful, so big. She gives away the wine, the cheeses, the growing scribble inside her too fragile. The screen moves, it is  a sort of punishment he says and I know he is right. It is a sort of punishment. They are happy.

It's the same bar, we vow not to get kicked out this time. His new girl is all curls and young smiles; I adore her, I adore his face in her presence. Voices call from the edge of the island; I have had too much to drink, distance is incalculable. Later, the apartment swims, the voices speak clearer, it is too late, I falter. Packages inside the door. It is so green. You should be here.

(The world has nothing, on people who refuse its reality.)

Comes the Night

Constantly the ever-so-slight tremble in my chest, like a heatwave gone wrong, like the old apartment where the subway trains rattled the floor and I get no reprieve. The snow thaws, the urbanites scurry around various temples of consumism to get all their Things, to amass so much stress under their belt that they can expel it all on Christmas morning in a spew of family arguments and disappointments. He stands in my doorway and says Maybe I'll go, maybe soon, I have no answers, I've always liked London, and I adore the shy smile on his face.

His stories read like Alice in Wonderland for adults; I find comfort in recognition, gratitude that someone has put words to the mad universes I try so hard to keep at bay. The old homemaker's guide from before the Great Wars declares that while marriage is truly a wondrous things, those inclined to madness do best to stay away. Being mentally unsound does not lend itself to a life of joyous matrimony. The v button on my keyboard is dull, I have to pound furiously on my computer to complete sentences. I cannot sleep.

My muscles and sinew change shape, my words recreate themselves. I hear another voice, another person, molded to her surroundings. I know this is the thrill of the move, the reinvention, the jig-saw puzzle made to fit.

I suppose I just thought one day the puzzle would turn out to be my own.

On Jagged Edges

The bath water is excruciatingly hot; I grimace, getting in. In a few minutes, my skin is numb, flustered, I can't feel where my body ends and the water begins. Next door, the old man is playing his violin, it is so hard to tell if he does it well. It's always loudest in the bathroom, in the vents. Finally citrus season, I peel a giant orange and let the peels drop into the tub; the fruit is juicy, refreshing, delicious, it will absolve us, it drips down my chin and lands sticky on my chest.

I know you walk these streets, still, I know our time is long since over. Summers will always give way to icy desert and endless sleep.

Another tired day passes, the nocturnal creatures rise. I feel the snow fall in my lungs; I move on.

Snowflake

The toy begins to sing and play when I kick it by accident, rummaging through my bag for a pen. The little child lends me her room for another night; I dream too much and get no rest. He sends me a manuscript; I devour it whole the minute the others have gone to sleep, it leaves me trembling. Crooked innards and charcoal eyes follow me to sleep.

Madness never terrified so much as it felt like home.

Hometowned.

Everything thaws. By morning, the streets are bare and the sound of water dripping from rooftops is deafening. I sleep in a room without windows and awake only at the smell of coffee, distant dreams of sex and summer settling in the corners.

All the bars are closed and he wretches in agony at the small town. We find a sports bar finally, get drunk, make lewd jokes and I ask him why he still lives here, when the world lies at his feet. I cannot leave them, he says. And when the other jewels lie scattered across the globe, I suppose I simply cannot make myself choose.

How odd, I think. To run only with purpose, and not out of fear of the calm. The bar closes, the people leave their chairs. They all look the same. I cringe.

Evergreen

Tell me at once all the fantastic things going on in Stockholm while I'm away, I write, as a heavy wet snow trickles aimlessly down the streets of the small town. Nothing, he says, but I won't believe it.

This town reminds me of why it is I go, what mire it is I fight so hard to sink into. The faces blur, they all look the same and I forget who I am in their mirror. His words remind me of city lights and greener pastures.

And I long for that safe harbor which is mine.

Pestle

We're just thinking of it as a two-year plan, I heard my father say from the other side of the Atlantic. In two years maybe we'll know more what we want, where you girls are, and we can make a new plan. The DNA that flows in my crooked veins, oh but it comes from them after all. For 19 years, everything sorted into two-year increments: long enough to find comfort and laughter, short enough to never have to answer to anything. I wanted only to live so that I could move with two suitcases and my bicycle on a train, my mother said once, as she poisoned my tongue with the taste of freedom.

The compulsion of repetition lies like a dark forest against my heart. It rolls me inside its cogs and tosses me out time and again to be crushed in the grind. My musles soften, yes, my resistance.

But my heart is mangled
and bleeds to no end.

Chat

Anyways, the point of the story is this famous asshole old man who obviously is brilliant says that the girlfriend is the young artist's ball and chain and keeps him from ever getting anywhere with his art, and that the only way to get anywere with your art is to sacrifice all those things that other people have, and like I said he was full of himself and an alcoholic but I'm just saying, maybe you think less about all those things that you anyways don't know what you want to do about right now and do the thing that you know you want to.

Yeah, I guess that's the thing. If I can sit in a chair and write for a living then everything is worth it. All the things that didn't work out and all the children that never were. That's the thing.

There you go. What are you waiting for? Cut that out and save it and good bye. I will see you in New York. 

I do not trust my own volition.

Her voice means I don't always have to.

O Magnum Mysterium

Commitment issues, he said and laughed. Did you ever consider that you might have those? We sat on the deep couch, in the dark night, the snow fell in great flakes outside and the calm of the evening mismatched every inch of my wretched innards. He waxed poetic about living in the moment and told my sister not to get so caught up in practical road blocks. I stared into the candle light and discovered bruises all along my arm.

Years ago, how young I was, when I tried to tell him of the silly ease of life. How world-weary his gaze at me then, and now the roles are all reversed. He put on his best understanding face, I couldn't help but lean against his steady shoulder and smile.

It occurs to me yet again that I do not deserve these people at my side, who follow me through the years and who carry me when I falter. I do not understand their loyalty, their kind eyes at my tragic corpse, but no matter.

I will hold to them until the end of days, if they will let me.

Laphroaig

Strange dreams play out in front of my unconscious eyes, of memory losses and acting classes in green summer grass. I awake confused, long unsure of what is real and what is not. When I walked home at the end of the night, the bakeries were beginning to open, but the streets were quiet. It was so cold my skin turned pink, or at least so I said and I walked in a daze.

These nights, how they will toss and tumble your frail psyche. How laughter sparks dormant connections in your gut but the whisky muddles sanity and you end up in the snow with question marks etched in your skin.

Once, years ago, I stood in that line, I know I stood too close to him and your eyes just missed it. The image has remained with me, all this time. You never saw.

I'm still not sure if I wanted you to.

Chéri

A soft hush settled over the theater, the houselights dimmed. I sat, just as when I was a child, and stared into the high ceiling, at the ornate decorations, imagined patrons 200 years ago settling into the rows to be, if only for a few hours, whisked away. I spent some time frowning at the lead's overacting, at the imperfect seams of music to whispered lines, at the restlessness of the audience, and then I was gone.

When we left the theater, people seemed to have a carefree look about them, as though they were already on to the next and wasn't it quite early on a Friday night and aren't we having a lovely time. I was certain my eyes betrayed me, that the tempest of my wrought insides played out on my face like I didn't know how to restrain my emotions. I thought Am I the only one who cannot handle being overwhelmed and hurried in the cold night to the small bar where bodies would soften my contours again.

There was a time I thought we could solve it all if only you needed me. There was a time I thought I would never tire if the bonds were only solid enough, great iron cables connecting my island to yours and we'd be safe.

It is not him I fear. 
It is his absence. 

How quickly youth fades
from us.

Wonderland

The storm calms; little flurries drift slowly towards the ground and land in soft piles. The news are frothing at the mouth trying to cover the disaster in its entirety before it passes. While I pretend to sleep, the streets get cleaned up, the city prepares to start anew. I do not pull the blinds. The world outside has that odd light color where ground and sky are indistinguishable, it is soothing.

The snow surprises us every time it comes, as though we'd never known it would hit us again. The questions on our lips are the same, year after year. We are always overwhelmed by their existence. It is life.

the Fast Forward

And by morning, the storm has come. Great big drifts of bright white snow sweep across the rooftops outside my window, cover the streets and cars and people. Life is at a standstill; I am grateful to work from home, to not have to even open the door. A super shovels snow from front porches across the street but to no avail, it is endless. I exhaust my every sense of snuggle and comfort, cannot take another long bath or drink any more hot cocoa. A video clip comes on the screen, a reminder of years ago and a man who watched the show only to indulge my attempted innocence. I tend to think if things were different then, they may have been different now, but it is only a trick of the lights. The truth is, we are who were were, and the sweetness in your voice was never going to change that.

The show seems old now, dated. Funny how the same never can be said for memories.

Winter Winds

They say the snow will wreak havoc with the city. It will come while we are sleeping and bury the streets in immobility. I putter around the apartment in oblivion, hanging evergreen wreaths and trilling carols at the walls. That heavy, wet blanket of despair lifted and all that is left behind is fresh air in my lungs and silly giggles at the mouths of babes. I walked home last night and the white snow lit the church at the end of the street, moonlight glittering off the side of the steeple, the air silent with winter. My inner cynic rails in confusion.

I'm packing a bag, now. Summer dresses, canvas shoes, things I will not miss for a few months, I'll send them with my father when he returns west next week. I am packing a bag. I am emptying a home.

The fever grips me. I laugh.

Commited.

You look cold, he said, here let me warm you. I shivered in the sudden winter as he wrapped his arms around me, his breath hot against my cheek. How easy to soften at somebody's side, to mold your body to theirs thoughtlessly, but wasn't the December night still freezing, our breaths white clouds against the black sky? I went back inside, danced until my head hurt, until beads of sweat poured down the small of my back and I forgot where I was. The couples gathered their possessions, prepared to sign checks they'll forever work to pay, an extra room in this apartment because soon there'll be babies and we make our lives in this city now, we follow the path laid out for us.

There was a picture in my inbox, 7th and Grove, why did we never come to this bar? I miss you every day. I looked around the dance floor, at the sober faces, at the unpresence of magic, and I knew it was time to go.

New York, my dearest, have we made our point yet? Have we fought our war and can we bury our hatchets, temper our pride? New York, my darling, I'm ready to come home.