Wander

The church is dark, bathed in a purple glow; there's no telling if it's dusk or dawn. Mountain ash trees are in bloom at last. The lilacs cover the entire block in thick scents, they seep through the streets. I sneak into the park, scissors in my purse, and snip a few thick branches--quickly, but desperate to linger. My entire apartment smells of summer.

We stayed too long at the bar last night, always too long, I tried to leave before midnight but what pumpkin was there for me to turn into anyways so we had another round. When all the other patrons had left, he turned on the music we are all too ashamed to admit we love and we sang along without care. Walk fast and laugh recklessly, he said and we giggled at his insanity but made it part of our song, determined to make it a part of our days as well. The world spins so quickly and do you realize on Saturday I've been here two years? It doesn't take a Freudian to see the pattern. I have settled in just enough to have to go. Just one more move, I declare but life draws out a map of habit and I am powerless to escape it. My parents move into a new apartment and laugh at their own madness. What have we done? she says but I have no answer.

The alarm will ring soon, much too soon, as I writhe in insomnia. I have no use for these mornings, these days. I only want twilight, and warm summer nights, and lilac-scented dawns to welcome in the street. The view over the sunsetting city took anyone's breath away tonight, the waters seem warm and inviting. Today my parents have been married 38 years. My mother says It was the first exam I failed; all I could think of was him and blossoming cherry trees. The power of May will fell even the greatest cynic. No alarm in the world can scare a heart in bloom.

Rise

And how the air is thick with the scent of lilacs. We walked along the water, in the afternoon sun, the sailboats newly lifted into a sea that glittered so much that it hurt the eye, and I couldn't walk a hundred feet without commenting on how beautiful it all was. Hours later, the night darkened for but an instance, my church looming across the channel, silhouetted against the burgeoning dawn, we walked across the bridge and our feet never tired. By the time I reached my steps, morning light lay gray across the church stones, but the horizon was still on fire. Birds went mad in the crab apple blossoms, no one has time for sleep.

I forget, every year I forget, how magical this moment is. For a few short days, everything lives, everything is mad with hope and reckless abandon, everything is beautiful. Every year I think this is good and do not realize until that morning comes that the rest of the year is but a bleak shadow, a failed copy of what life may truly be. The winter is long, and dark, and terrifying. But it is behind us now. It may never have existed at all.

The sun rises, the apartment is light. My eyes refuse to tire.

I live.

Seaside

The church steeple was swathed in a heavy fog this morning. The cherry blossoms still spread their pink petals on the sidewalks; stressed commuters don't know whether to wear jackets or sundresses, everyone is uncomfortable. The alcohol's run out, I am forced to bury myself in work. The hours pass, heavy clouds lie low around my temples and the office empties out. Finally the alarm comes on and I am chased into the street.

As I walk, the rain picks up. But it's too late now, I've committed to these steps, I've committed to this long walk home and the bus passes by without stopping. On the bridge to the Old Town, a group of girls make selfies under their umbrellas and no filter can make the city less gray. But the wind swerves around the old buildings and sweeps past my loud music and guarded steps. It comes from the East and smells of the sea. Musty, salty, the smell of frozen secrets thawing into spring. It feels like a west coast storm, the kind where the horizon is endless, and the looming houses of the South Island are tinged in quiet mist. The promenade is empty.

For a while, I thought you might be my excuse not to go. That I was hoping for a reason to stay, a reason to add my brick to mortar and make a living in this city after all. But the void in your wake fills quickly with images of Morton Street in autumn, of dirty subway rides and magnolia blossoms in the park, of that wind which whispers a lifetime of dreams. Now that you are gone, I needn't look for signs and reasons.

There is no cure for this itch inside me.
I hide the pill
under my tongue
and spit it out when no one is watching.
Ready
the
spring
in
my
step.

Like Saccharin

More wine, more ignorant bliss, the weekend passes in a tumult of nausea and you watch yourself from two feet over, amazed at the car crash in action. By Sunday, you cannot sleep but you cannot leave the bed, you starve but cannot eat, you toss between fits of apathy and waves of angst, it is not pretty. The number of toothbrushes in the bathroom has changed. The plants on the windowsill have gone wild; it is a jungle, and you no longer need to look straight into the lives of your neighbors across the street.

I tire of writing in the first person, but I cannot be with others for more than little moments at a time or I implode, wither, and then what else is there to say. I imagine you understand. A giant tome of Pushcart-prized short stories simmers through my line of vision. They all describe the world, they all speak of third person and scenery details, but I pick them apart ruthlessly to give myself a break. It doesn't help. Outside, it rains: a welcome rain, kind. The screams of amusement park visitors fly across the water. The wind must be just right. Tomorrow is Monday, again.

The world keeps spinning.
What are you going to do about it?

of You

Write something happy, she says. When you write happy things, I print them out and put them on my message board. I would love to oblige, but where is the glittering rainbow, in all this Normality?

Another voice comes down the line, says that's what we do. We endure this monotony for one instant of magic, and I suppose she is right. It just seems there was more magic to be had, previously. I refuse to believe this is age, or that was naïvite, that we are victims of insight and no more early mornings of sunrise and giggles are to be had. I refuse to believe we are too old to be blown away.

The bird cherries bloom, the trees have exploded and the air is thick with sweet smells, it is overwhelming. My heels click, click all along the quiet side-streets, Saturday night and it ends too early, too according to plan. I walk past office windows: publishers, artists, photographers, entrepreneurs. There is a life out there for the taking, and I am tempted to accept that which is easily given, but I must not.

A fire burns inside you unwilling to accept complacency and comfort. Let it burn, to the ground.
The fireworks will catch up,
eventually.

Independence Day

Too much wine, too much everything, she fed me water until I could stand straight but my eyes would not follow suit. Finally making my way home and if this was New York I would be hailing a cab faster than I could fall off this curb but none were to be had. The last steps up the hill impossible; the park around the church was quiet where just hours before we were packed like sardines staring into the sun.

Things end, eventually but never gracefully. It makes sense, she said at my declaration, you're going to New York and isn't this what you do. Realizing that when I ended it with her that was exactly what lay at my feet. I amass this rubble around me and climax at leaving it all behind. Clean floors. Clean slates.I fought so hard to find a way out, only to realize the drug of staying in was stronger.

Ticket sales
are
up.

Yet.

What have I done? He can't be more than 22. We laughed at the bar, but her face was tinged with shame over what Life had become. When I was 22, what hadn't I done?

I stared into the corners and thought of 22. Of that summer I spent in an unknown bedroom with white walls because his face reminded me of you, and still the mornings showed me nothing else did. All these years later, your eyes still break my heart. We didn't want to leave the bar.

The doors closed behind us, and there was just a flicker of light at the horizon. The cherry tree blossoms had that scent about them, the air chilly but hopeful. Another day beckons.

We still don't spend our mornings
within the same walls.
I still spend my nights wishing we did.

Anew

The apartment lies silent, spotless. I daren't so much as move, for fear of disturbing the impeccable cleanliness, for ruining the priceless moment of a brand new start. May settles in my chest, and I dare to see an entire summer stretch for miles ahead; perhaps there will be more sun, yet. Two years ago I came to this city--it was such a warm summer that year, so beautiful--and the streets were so crooked, it hurt just to breathe. Two years later, and I have plants on the windowsills, I have family tucked away on the islands. Two years later and, on cue, my bags await their time to be packed.

Are you even capable of having a home? he asks, and I know the question is honest. Well-rehearsed answers make their way into the ether, but the truth is I am as homeless now as I was at 16 and it begins to dawn on me that this is my life. I feel as at home in an airport as I do behind this door that doesn't even have my name on it. I convince myself that one more leap will scratch the itch out for good, but everyone knows it's a joke and I'm forever chasing rainbows. I spent the weekend alone but hallucinated moving shadows in the corner of my eye. Nothing was there when I turned.

Your face came on the screen today, your voice, it all felt the same. The stubborn pieces of times past jabbed at my insides until memories flooded back and filled every resting cavity. There was a time I believed we could walk the same road. But you merely left a ghost in the streets and they only ever run in circles.

My greatest fear is that I'm doing the very same.

Ascension

My mind repeats itself like a broken record, filled with nothing but sunshine and blossoms, and I haven't the heart to lift the needle and make it move on. For a few short days, the world is reborn, and the summer air swirls through me until I am unable to speak of anything else. I saw you in the park one morning, nearly close enough to touch. I told the children the names of flowers, we touched the soft, soft leaves, and it could have just been a trick of the lights.

I'm lying on the couch panicking over my life and what's to become of it, she writes and how I know the feeling. But Brooklyn sat on a chair in my apartment this week and it reminded me I have a home, I have a place that is mine to return to, I have a purpose that I never fulfilled but which still awaits. Those long winter months, those dead branches and impenetrable sludge, they do their damndest to make you forget, to make you lose your foothold. But if you wake up panting on the shoreline, and it turns out to be May, then it means you survived. It means you are not lost at sea. And you have not forgotten.

I look at the devastation that is my apartment, my mind, my heart, my life. It's just a matter of beginning somewhere, of sorting through the rubble, and not finishing till you're done.

20:56

You turn your back for just a second, and then it's happened. Suddenly the world is green, and warm, and alive. Suddenly scarves and jackets cling to your steaming skin, and there's a smile on peoples' faces you have not seen in months. The cherry trees bloom, the magnolias, the daffodils. Trees that you saw barren just yesterday sprout dewy clusters of baby leaves; the city shimmers in chartreuse.

I peeled off layers of warm winter clothing, pulled out a blanket from deep within the closet's back shelves. We packed the cups, the wine, the food, the sunglasses and headed to the church at the top of the hill, to the golden spot at the peak of the city that last would see the sun set. We milled among the hundreds, buried ourselves in the burgeoning grass, stared straight into the sun, and we laughed.

That this is what comes, after all those months of perpetual darkness and death. I don't want to say it's worth it... but it's hard not to, she said. I rolled another cigarette, breathed the smoke and heat and spring deep into my lungs, felt the panic in my gut evaporate into the breeze. The mess inside remains.

But for this one sweet moment,
it is powerless.

Familia

We will not believe you until you are there, she says, but already they're packing their bags. You weep in fear they will be right, even as you refuse to believe the possibility. The sun grew warm against the skin of the northern people, we sat in a park with our wine glasses and watched the sun set; it was every bit as magical as you'd forgotten it could be.

Last night I tossed and turned, slept minutes at most and cursed the racing mind. In light of day, when trees explode in greens and pinks and birdsong, despair seemed less hostile, less volatile. In light of day, the memory of a sleepless night strengthens your resolve.

In her eyes you see the courage that brought you over before. Her smile reminds you of home.

You will fly.

A Reason

When we walked home up the long hill, the city glittering at our feet, the waters dark and inviting, I saw at the edge of the horizon an orange light, streaming into the clouds: dawn. We laughed and hurried on tired legs; we slept the second our heads hit the pillow. How simple the pleasure of friendship; how impossible it seems that she was not always here, once she is. The tequila buzzed in my head come morning. The apartment seemed emptier, again.

Time overwhelms me. Age, the added years, the growing to-do list that never seems to get checked off enough. The pleasant smiles around me have discovered the secret: resign, accept, move on.

But now is not yet the time to accept. Now is the time to laugh and hurry, to greet the sunrise. Now is the time to have something to prove, and to prove it. You may not believe it now; I do not blame you.

I don't believe it myself, until I see it.

Oh, Look What You've Done

You're the one in my building, right? You live upstairs? I wasn't in the mood for a laundry room chat; he always talks too loud, too much, he never lets you go and I was so tired. You have to seize the sleep when it sways past the edges of the jet lag, and I was losing my window. But he always weaves tales of the latest house gossip, and it is difficult not to listen. There's a new neighbor next door, where the weeping child used to live. Her perfume lingers in the hallway for an hour, he scoffs, but I hadn't even heard her move.

It seems you are out there, too. On these same streets, sharing the same haunts. I don't mistake another's frame for yours on the subway; I do not hear your voice when the phone rings. But I sense your steps in the dusky silhouettes of this city and that refuses to go away.

I try to wash my hands clean
of you
and I fail.