Morning

Light was streaming in around the sides of the pulled curtain, I was certain it was late morning, I'd slept so soundly. The bed was crowded, and the wretched hangover foiled my attempts at sneaking out silently; no one stirred. By the time I realized it was only 6:30, I was already up, it seemed useless to go back to bed. I put on my clothes, my coat, rubbed my eyes and stumbled out. The air was still, the morning cool but light, that special light that mornings have and you know it's spring. I stood on the platform and looked at the football field across the road. Soon, they will come here to play. Soon, the trees will be green. Soon. The train rolled in, rocked quietly back to the city, and the way the sun streamed over the Stockholm inlet, over the churches in Old Town and bright-eyed seagulls made me think We are going to be okay. You know the change when it's come. You lie panting on the shoreline, the great waves receding, merely lapping at your feet now where they were drowning you before. Someone has cleared the debris in the courtyard; little crocus flowers appear out of the rubble, whisper good morning.

You breathe.

Friday Good

Cut yourself
enough times

eventually
you will not
even
flinch

Hide (n)

Eventually, slowly, the ground thaws, the days grow milder. Suddenly the air doesn't hurt so much in your lungs, but you've been tricked before and everyone walks a careful step, no one dares to presume. Still, the evenings are light outside the office window, the birds are ignorant to the temperatures. A boy sat next to me on the bus and smelled of earth; I wondered what he did for a living.

The silences carve my insides with vicious blades; they leave me speechless. But little by little (eventually, slowly), the scars thicken my skin, distance makes the heart beat to its own rhythm, the voice by the piano grows louder again, unapologetic. The sprouts on the windowsill stretch their newfound lives toward the light. It's just us now.

We made it out alive.

Deluge

It occurred to me today,
as I stood with broken headphones
hanging off my head,
pulling brown packing tape
around my broken glasses,
in a worn out hoodie
that this is not
the life
of a responsible adult
of a person who has their shit together
of any sort of dignity.

I cannot carry you
if you will not let me.
You cannot carry me
until I consent
to give in.

Life turns out to be
mostly a collection
of people
standing on their own. 

Hubbell.

The train rolled into the station. We say our goodbyes, say I'll see you there, say empty words because the big ones do not fit in the small spaces we are afforded. How it seems I am the one leaving when in fact it's your bags that are packed, your horizons that are changing.

I travel between the same end stations, time and again. Always that angst in my gut, always that collection of clothes that are not mine stuffed into an indifferent bag. I see the lives around me evolve, change, move on, while I am busy making the rounds, making hospitality visits, looking at their faces and trying to see my eyes in them. But it only hurts when I do.

This will all end in tears,
you said.

You were right.

New Moon

Every day adds another layer of snow. Whispy, light, powder, but persistent. Every day another layer. People pull their coats tighter, pull their lips tighter, pretend they never believed in spring to begin with, a Nordic cynicism draped around the bus stops, across the grocery store lines. Don't look anyone in the eyes or you will fall into the bottomless pit that is your neighbor's despair.

My dearest seem to abandon me. Perhaps I need them too much, perhaps my January ego turned them off; I spend so much time trying to be alone that it takes a while to see the abandonment. I writhe in shame over my shortcomings. Vow improvement. Vow that as soon as this damnation of winter passes, everything will be different. Snow plows pass like thunder outside the window. It is too hard just to breathe.

Plants sprout in the dark earth I so optimistically plotted weeks ago, when hope and sun shone alike. They do not care about vicious winter winds or despondent tears. They see the light even as buried deep in the soil. They feel the summer to come, though they've never known it before.

Today, equinox.

That is All.

Labels

She broke up with him, you know, she says casually over the phone. Decided she had no feelings left and now they have to sell the house. Why were they looking at rings just last month, and he's devastated of course.

I see Polaroid snapshots of a magical summer swirling past me one by one. A narrow couch in another land and eyes surprised by what they'd discovered in the darkness. Promises of strings untied, drunken dances through the row of sunny dawns, always those narrow beds and quiet reassurances, until guilty tears and bleeding hearts as the August night grew dark again.

The City won, then. I ran straight into the bright light and never looked back because what was there to see that could ever compete. You pick your poisons.

Other people's demands for a perfect life seem foreign.

Houses and gold bands aren't forever, either.

No Other Way

I wake early, much too early. The hangover lies like a heavy threat over the bed, suffocates the sunrise and crooked dreams. I know there were words written in the dark night, but I cannot remember what they were. The feelings, however, remain.

The day drags itself through a headache cloud and terrified nerves. In the bath, a new book begins to write itself quietly, and I am glad of its company. A bottle of wine lends an ear, but I have nothing worth telling it and we grow tired in the evening. The truth is, anxiety is company enough. The truth is, it is not entirely unwelcome, after all.

Because in the dark smoke and and vicious daggers, do I not finally recognize my own face, my bleeding heart? In the whirling angst that strangles my lungs and silences my voice, do I not see words write themselves across blank pages, remember where I came from, where I know I must go?

These drops of red wine, this festering wound. These breathless tears, this screaming madness. When it truly is time. It means you bleed with purpose.

See You (There)

A block past her house, at the point where I know it's just straight ahead to my building and the steps, the air beat right out of me. My eyes stared wildly around me, my breath short, I knew I knew nothing of the life I lead. They sat at the bars with their smug New York faces and I wanted so terribly to be in their midst. So many stories of those streets, so many pictures painted of a life in the City that once was mine.

Spring stirs in me. It reminds me of a life I once intended to live. The words bowl around my edges, the images. Write these sentences, wring them inside out, inhale the noxious fumes of their insanity.

This anxiety that veers at my gut, it is not an unwelcome stranger. It nudges harshly at corners soft with the years, it stabs at veins I have so long kept sewn up. Today I bleed.

Tomorrow, perhaps, I leave.

Houston and 3rd

Your eyes look of a body in pain,
she says
and I didn't think it showed

but my limbs turned
themselves
inside out

and for hours
I was too tired
to sleep.

Keep the Earth

The snow melts in oceans across the parks, but it freezes just as quickly again. Vast expanses of smooth glass ice cover the city, treacherous but hopeful: hesitant, but determined. The ratio of gravel to snow in the plowed piles at the end of the street changes. The sidewalks are dirty, my boots dusted.

She arrives from the old pasta factory on Kent Avenue, says Maybe we are done with that city now. Maybe it is time to move on, and I didn't realize it broke my heart until later. We try to catch up the year that's passed but the coffee cup is not large enough and the March wind outside is so malevolent, my fingers freeze and crack under worn-down fingernails. My jaws slowly wind shut, like an iron drawbridge and there's no magic word to ease the hold; the familiar ball of black yarn tightens itself in my gut, arranges itself uncomfortably, prepares for expansion.

The whole way home from work I mouth the words to the music in my ears, it can't be helped. It's the only thing that keeps my legs moving, my lungs breathing. Melting ice caps, spring flood, gravel, gravel, gravel, they dislodge from my still frame, they tear out all the sleeping violences within, stir the pot, pull it out of my pores and I scramble to sweep it all under the rug in time but it is too late.

The sun shines so brightly into the little apartment at the top of the steps, lately. It touches the dusty corners and warms the sprouting windowsill. A quiet body shivers inside, paces restlessly, mouths the words.

Pulls the blinds.

Promises

At six a.m. I woke with a toothache. The skies were hazy, but pink streaks reflected on the passing clouds: sunrise. The heavy ball of lead lay unrelenting in my gut, my body still frozen in inertia. Still no images or words painted themselves in my mind to explain the darkness. It simply lay there, like an unwelcome guest that was bound to ruin your party, it just would not reveal when. I cried at some point, but it was unsatisfying, stupid. They called me out for a coffee, for sunshine, to feel the baby kick. I sat on their couch and knew I could not stay long. I dared not look them in the eye for fear of revealing the void.

I went home and buried myself in the bathtub. The water excrutiatingly warm, I scrubbed every inch of my skin, every twist of my body, I scrubbed until it was sore, flushed. I found an open bottle of wine, poured great big glassfuls even though it had already turned to vinegar. I spilled on the floor and did not bother cleaning it up.

If it is time, bring it on. Beat me to a pulp and leave me panting on the shoreline. 

But don't make me do it myself. 

Perhaps it must get worse, before it gets better. Perhaps this is the better. You know these encroaching walls, you know this ravaging demon. Perhaps the apathy of winter is not when you are dead.

It might just be the break you get, from yourself.

Forshade

I can feel it coming, it looms behind my back. The darkness chases me, seems ready to leap on my shoulders at every turn but never does, never catches up and I grow impatient with the constant threat, gnawing at my senses. If you will destroy me, wash over me quick and let me drown. Do not leave me in this asylum ice bath to rot.

The dreams returned this week, vivid dreams and strange stories, and I wake exhausted, every morning my whole body in pain. I realize I have not dreamed the entire winter. The sunlight is so bright, so relentless in its powers, but it also brings light to all that hid under the dark cloak of winter, it is ruthless. My windows are dirty, my body falls apart. My arguments crumble, my choices.

A sinking ship at the bottom of my stomach makes me late for work. I drag my crippled limbs through the sunshine, try not to look anyone in the eye. If I can only make it to my desk, I can blend into the paperwork and avoid detection. Tonight I can bar my doors.

Await the storm.

to my Hometown.

It's like you could leave at any moment, like you could disappear without warning. I know that's what you do. How hesitant the words when they came, we sat in the dark night smoking into open windows, winter winds flooding the apartment and I stared across the street trying to find another truth in the sleeping apartments that lay there.

I'm buying time, I thought. I'm spending my savings until the answers are clear. 

The mornings are light now, birds mad with the impending season, people line up along walls and gladly let themselves be blinded by the sun. An entire spring spreads out ahead of us, the coming of brown skin and warm waters, of feeling every cell within burst of joy and adventure. The apartment at the top of the steps is mine for an entire sunny season if I want it, my puppet master has played his final hand and I am left with all the cards in a pile. I have decided to stay, I tell them, and their smiles make my skin itch.

To choose one thing, is to not choose another. I choose this. I choose this.

I'm buying time.

I'm not going anywhere.