Snowdrop

And then one morning, everything had changed. I woke early, the blinds up, an odd light painted along the walls, I knew it was different. There was such a thick fog out, the city lay blind in the steaming snow, winter was lifting. By the time the bus sped down the hill that overlooks the Stockholm inlet, all that remained was a slight mist, the entire view looked like a giant Turner painting. I couldn't help but smile.

The days since have passed in a string of sunlit pearls. There is light when we wake, there is light when we close the office doors behind us. This sunshine has the power to pierce our veiled eyes. The children and I danced around the watered sidewalks and tried to uncover the singing birds, but really all we did was laugh. He writes to say I got words again, and I read and reread the sentence with such a whirl in my heart, because I know the feeling and it feels a lot like Life.

It begins now. The long days and singing heart. It begins now. Life.

the Violins

There was a moment today
as I stood outside work
in the beaming sunshine
in the thawing air
with a cup of coffee in my hand
and serenity on my face
and the snow melting around me
in long streams of steaming water,
that I felt your scent
on the wind
and the light blinded me

and I never wanted to go inside again. 

So Good

When at last I wake, I see the sunlight streaming at the edges of the sharply pulled blinds. I know it is out there. I awake sober, alone, my every muscle pains me merely because it is conscious, normally my Sundays are so numb in hangover. But I know, it is out there.

I drink coffee out of the giant tea mug; I have to heat the milk beforehand or the sheer amount makes everything cold in seconds. Across the street, my neighbor begins to smoke on the balcony again; he has been absent all through the dark months, the door has perpetually been closed. I bury myself in my head phones, play the soundtrack of when the city was young, when every street was unmapped but the sun refused to stop shining. How we walked down the hill, past the street where I would once live, in the soft summer night to the bar I would once call home, how we rekindled old friendship and I had a hand to hold in the new town, in the new life, where I found myself so impossibly lost.

People are impermanent, circumstance. Even cities crumble and leave you by the wayside, the music can let you down merely by being human, and you are tempted to believe the only thing that is always with you is yourself, but you are wrong. Because year after year, despite wars and tragedy, through storms and despair, the seasons will pass, one after another, and never fail to return.

If I make it through this winter, if I survive the darkness and the cold and the wraiths that guard my door, if only I keep my head over the freezing water's edge and let the days pass, at last the sun will return, at last the season will pass and spring may burst into my sleeping shell once more. If only I remember how to breathe, if I inhale and exhale in the right order and don't ask any of the difficult questions while the days are still dark, spring will return, the word will return, I will return. Just a little more time, my dear, and again we can abandon merely surviving. Again we can live.

Left Bank

I dreamed of frail branches sprouting, long slender twigs trembling in anticipation and under exertion, but determined. How green they were, the tiny, wrinkled leaves, how impossibly small yet unstoppable and we knew there would be no going back. The story of the dream, the twists, the point, are all gone, there were fall foliage colors and bright sunny mountainsides seen from ski lifts and space to breathe, but mostly there was that vibrant green that could pierce a heart with joy if you let it. How could you not?

When I woke, too late, the skies were grey, the snow sped in flurries around the street corners and I felt the stab of betrayal in my gut. People below hurried, pulled their coats tighter, suffered. Sometimes the heavy cold rains would beat it back so that it would seem that [spring] would never come and that you were losing a season out of your life. I scrub kitchen tiles in a desperate attempt to get the cog wheels within to start turning again, to remember they are alive and have choices to make. I don't think I'll be selling in April. I think maybe, if you want, you can stay through summer.  

He runs his fingers through his hair in that way of his, stands in my hallway, pulling at the strings of my life because I hand them to him. God or Devil, it is impossible to gauge his power, and I know it's unfair to even call it his. A soundtrack beats in my ear drum, pulls at my heartstrings, I cry over the dirty dishes in a home I try not to call mine. February will drag you through the dregs, will ruin your pretty dress and force the gravel into your eyes. It sinks its teeth into your pale skin until its venom has drowned you entirely. You haven't even soul left enough for tears.

But there are flowers on your windowsill, they stretch their petals towards the sky and mock the season with their mere existence.

Grit your teeth, stare at them until your eyes bleed.

This, too, shall pass.

Safeties

(The greatest trick 

the Devil ever pulled 

was convincing the world 

he didn't exist.)




I sleep so soundly at night, 
lately.

Sleep In

She stands at the exit and it is as though your worlds were never parted. Her voice in your apartment, her stories in your coffee; you never want the day to end. What would it be like if you lived here, I dream, and we know our days will never lie next to each other as they once did. No matter. She is already a stitch in your heart, holding the seams together, and neither time nor distance have anything on stitches of the heart. You will not bleed.

And thus every day passes: a sweet friend by your side, a sweet stitch in your heart. They hold you and carry you when February rains ice and breaks your determination. Not a single day passes when I do not rest my head on my pillow grateful for their unending loyalty and beautiful smiles.

Do not work too much
he says as he withers,
Do not leave your feelings 
in your chest,
Speak.
Never fight over money. 
Dare to say No.

Dare to say Yes.

When I woke early in the morning, warm skin next to mine and a rhythmic breathing mimicking my own, I heard birds outside the open window, mad with fervor and anticipating light. I smiled.

It will come,
in time.
I'll be waiting.

Brief

I'm tired, so tired, every quiet moment I feel I may pass out, but the children climb in my lap and whisper sweet stories of a world we can only barely glimpse, so I persevere. Every day in their presence I laugh, every moment by their side I am a better version of myself, it does not go unnoticed. At dinner, I still reel with exhaustion, but by the time we get to the bar, it is all hearts and familiar giggles. When the last patrons have left, we laugh louder and play all the music we are too ashamed to love in public. The dark space nestles its way through my insides, it is my living room when I have none; it is my home when I so desperately need it.

It terrifies me to no end, he says.
My heart beats wildly in my chest.
Vows to stitch the pieces back
Together.

Take One

Slushy Stockholm streets, everything takes twice as long to reach and still you nearly fall on your way. The bar lies quiet, unusually quiet, but it matters little when it's your living room they're dancing in. Everything falls into its routine again. Your glasses are broken and you walk slowly through the apartment, blind.

We spoke so much of old times, and how different the days can appear in the light of someone else's eyes. They were the most miserable years of my existence, she says and you thought so long they were the peak of yours. You mourned their passing when life carried on and left you by the wayside. I always admired you and had no idea, such is youth. It seems too long ago now to right the wrongs but perhaps their appearance was always skewed to begin with. I'm sorry.

Time runs out, runs away from us, I have all the time in the world but I hesitate to wind the clock. February makes me want to lock the door, spring will make me want to run, I never know what to make of this life, nor you in it.

You are welcome, he says.
Your memories are not.

Disembark

We return from our travels never who we were when we left. The snow looks the same, the grey eyes in people's faces, the sounds. But you see something different around the street corner, in the conversation, on the horizon. The church has a strange glow as you climb the hill: the humbling beauty of a home to return to; the fading sense of having a home at all. You have always traveled, he says, you always will, and he is right, of course. But no longer is travel the terrified compulsion of a psyche in chains. It tickles me now, allures me, I long for its unimaginable awe and heavy sleep.

The apartment looks the same, the face in the mirror. My body falls quickly on familiar sheets, I am amazed at the life and the morning to come, the unexpected.

It occurs to me finally.
The trip is nothing like
over.

l'Enfer

We trudged the cold, wet boulevards past dead men and their glories, our fingers stiff with winter, to stand at the gates of hell in awe. Wretched souls, tormented through their deaths and wrangled out of the statue in agony, I stared for ages as giant snow flakes began falling in the Shadows above.

The first time I saw them, how floored, how devastated at the overwhelming pain in my chest. Now I wanted to run my hands over every detail, memorize them in my fingerprints.

I stood at the end of the subway platform today and stared into the black belly of the city. Those tunnels of Paris, tunnels of New York, I peer into the darkness and try to discover the secret of the metropolitan monster. Always at the edge, always too aware, too afraid to run carelessly into the dark void, to dare uncover what lies beyond. A great caterpillar of a train swerved down the rails toward the station. A hundred people shook to its rhythm.

Soon, me too.

The Quiet Man

Graves spread out in every direction, like a sea of lives passed around us. The walk there had been cold, we shivered at the entrance and looked at the names on the map. Here, underneath this stone slab, lies the body of someone who changed your life. Great monuments twist and turn towards the sky, angels frozen in perpetual mourning, ancient headstones crack and fall apart under the unstoppable forces of nature.

We came to the edge of the hill, where more graves yet stretched to the edge of the horizon, and the sun came out from beyond the dreary skies. And oh, how the world will change in sunlight. Our skin thawed, our steps lightened, we stood still staring at the miracle of the precipice of spring. At the edge of the parc, little yellow croci took their first trembling steps into the light and I laughed. This is what we came for. This is the magic unplanned.

Our French stumbled across the markets and bookstores, our bags filled with a life we pretended was ours. At the end of the night, we stepped lightly down wooden stairs and squeezed into a cramped corner of the bar, as five, ten, fifteen faces around us stirred the air into a frenzy with folk music. A simple beginning, fingers dancing across the instruments, I closed my eyes and let my heart leap in my chest. The air was warm when we returned to the apartment.

I am ready to believe,
again.

Hobo blues

Rain-soaked black cobblestone, narrow streets of one-way traffic and you freeze right to the bone, no matter. The song of their words, we stand on the subway train mimicking them with pursed lips, I paint the map in my head, again, again, filling them in with street names and corner bistros. At the pyramid, a face from so long ago; at the Bastille, a face from when the old town was new, dinner is all red wine and catching up, by the time we leave the restaurant the rain has stopped.

How life looks different when the land moves beneath you. How the skyline paints its contours across your to-do list and leaves it freer than before, liberated by possibility. You know this is the charm of the drug. You breathe in deeply.

Pretend you can quit if you want to.

Taste It

There's snow on the lake, the skies behind are dark, gray, ominous. It looks like a painting. The train gathers speed and we pass a school yard, where tweenie children play soccer and shove each other in the snow. Childhood is such a cruel scene. We roll through half-dead towns where people still make their lives, and the angst of the small town claws at my insides, how do they keep themselves from laying their heads in the oven?

She texts me from another train, says I'm almost there. Says tomorrow we are in Paris. The beauty of mad adventures caresses my eyelids, the straitjacket around my chest releases. Tomorrow the world will look different. Tomorrow we paint the sky with life.

In Flight

Six hours until I go to the airport, she writes, and I'm drunk in bed with a man next to me. We spend the day writing, as she finally gathers her things in a bag, locks up the apartment, and flies to the ends of the earth. She sends pictures of the airplane, describes the last fluttering heartbeats before boarding. I sit in my dark office, exhausted by the season and the sleet and the life, and I let my imagination walk me alongside her all day. The frantic scramble to pack even though it is much too late to do it properly, the rush to the airport, the overwhelming desire to sleep and then the inability once airborne. To always have a ticket in your back pocket. The scratching of the itch. She sends me a few last kisses before the plane takes off, my companion through the dreary nights, my soldier in the alienated mine fields of growing old, my cheerleader in choosing the crooked paths. The weeks will be long in silence.

I turn to the computer. Print a boarding pass. Go through my apartment looking at things that would sparkle in Parisian dust. And beneath the frozen tundra of my skin, beneath the dead leaves of fall and the apathy of the season, a tiny ember begins to glow, a fragile seed begins to grow. Somewhere in the darkest corner of my heart, I tremble.

The spring will catch up with you at last, the itch shudder across your veins. The madness will stir your sleeping senses and you will remember the hopeless wanderer within.

You will remember you love her.
You would not have it, any other way.