On hospitals

The corridors were a maze; hurried people in scrubs ushered us deeper and deeper into the unseen bowels of the London Royal Hospital emergency room. Injury victims waiting room, and she was offended because she wasn't even injured. A young boy sat across from us. When they told him he'd broken his arm, he cried, and his friend had no sympathy to offer. Another drunken fight. The halls were full of them. 

By the time we left the hospital, she sun began to rise over London Town. It spread a pink sheen over St Paul's dome, glittered in the skyscrapers and dusted the dirty streets with a quiet calm. We sat at the front of a double decker and it felt like the entire city lay at our feet. It was perhaps the greatest moment yet, and the bus driver didn't charge us fare. 

There's a picture in my inbox, with other hospital sheets, a hundred times I've seen it already. A small baby lies in his mother's arms, a tiny hand clutching at reality and clothes he must wait to grow into. He looks like his father. I saw it at that last pub, right before the taxicab and the hospital turmoil, and I cried in the dim lights at the wooden table, overwhelmed with gratitude and wonder. He lives now, he exists now, he is here. He doesn't know it yet, but he is my family. 

I loved him before I knew how. 

Crouch End

Already the voice of the bus driver sent a familiar ease down my spine. She spoke of seat belts and arrival times at the airport as she eased us out of the sunny Stockholm afternoon. In my book, the narrator moved with ease to Italy, drank cool white wine in the Capri sun and had passionate rows with her lover, and Stockholm was bustling with summer fever. Adventure tickled my senses, stirred the blond hairs on my skin, and as the plane lifted above the clouds, to that vast landscape of billowing white cotton balls and dreamy oceans in the sky, I knew again it was a drug I will never quit. 

London is rainy, dark, quiet in the middle if the night, save for drunk kids walking barefoot and we sat on the bottom deck of the bus. The air smells of giant English roses and elder flowers; I look the wrong direction to cross the street every time. The city lies quiet, like a mysterious treasure waiting to be discovered, like a blank sheet of paper waiting to be mapped and for this short moment, everything is yet to come. The apartment is quiet; I sleep like I am right where I belong. 

and Pearls

Walk toward the sunrise, a voice inside my head said. Put one foot in front of the other. For a few minutes, I was convinced it was impossible. The Monday night bars were closing, except the little cave from which I stumbled, leaving a half-drunk glass and a row of snickering faces. It seemed an exit in the nick of time, but I threw up my entire evening when I got home, anyways.

Tuesday morning sunshine made my skin dissolve, tremble like heat waves on Texas roads, and entering my boss's office took all my strength. We have a position for you, she says, and at once the walls are swimming again, the rows of neatly stacked paper. But I think I'm going to New York, I say, and somehow I believe the words, now. The job offers beckon, the building of a future arises around me, how hard it is to walk away.

How much more precious the gem for which you do.

A Midsummer Night's Dream

Pick seven different kinds of flowers, put them under your pillow. The person you dream of will be your betrothed. 

The midsummer night's tale is clear, the rules dictated from days of old. The party was over long before sunrise but birds were already singing in the forest beyond, as I stepped into the meadow to find my treasure. The rain had subsided, our bathing suits dripping from midnight swims, and I picked the tiny flowers with care, unsure of their purpose. One day this will all be a quaint story from our youth and who will know the difference. Ring around her finger, she asks me now the plan, and all I know is once autumn comes, I have to go. 

This season will pass, as it always does. The days will grow shorter, and you already have Someone Else. Our only constant is our eyes in the mirror, the city  that carries on even when you are not there. There is comfort in that which is reliable. I'm a sucker for continuity, even though you'd never guess.

I place the flowers under my pillow. Pray I'll dream of your streets tonight. 

Eve

The moon hung low, nearly full over the pines and reflecting over the quiet lake. We stepped carefully on the dark path and emerged on a small rock at the water's edge. Took all our clothes off and slipped into the warm water, midnight mist swaying softly across the mirrored surface. It was still light enough to see the house, a dark silhouette of the dog in the reeds, impatiently searching for unknown treasure. She swam out to greet us, nervous when we got too far and nipping at our fingers to pull us back, but we just laughed and swam further into the lake. Even as we gave up and climbed into our beds, the night outside was light and trickling through the trees; perhaps it was dawn. 

A great melancholy sinks itself into my gut. It refuses to explain itself, to reason with my questions. I have seen its dark treacle before, even in the midst of summer glory and the noisy chatter of friendships. It brings no good, offers no great revelation or meaning. There is merely the heavy sighs of days wasted and promises unfulfilled. I vow to make this time different, to fight the current before it pulls me under and I drown. 

We have been talking about offering you a proper position here, if you'd have it, she says. 

My stomach turns. This is my cue. It is time to pack the bags and make the change. It is time to go, before it goes without me. Before winter freezes the treacle to stone. 

(also)

(and when the night is at its darkest,
a blue glow still lights up the room,
glides like still water on the windows
across the street,
and looking north
to the City,
the horizon dances in deep apricots
and warm red sun storms
because it lies just beneath the surface,
because when the night is at its darkest
it is still alive
and singing;
then it seems impossible
to ever live any other way
to have nights that are dark
to have days when the sun will not rise. 
With the joy of what is now
comes the terror
of what is intevitably to come.)

In Your Heart

The air grows warm, the skin with a certain new flush. There was a breeze today, across the bridge, that was nothing but kind and summer seemed forever. He looked me in straight in the eyes, in that way he has and he cannot help it. It makes me stutter. I crossed the bridge to your island and it filled my mind with visions of midnight skinny dipping and daylong breakfasts on the roof, but that's all gone now. I don't understand if I should mourn it or if it's already too long ago to remember properly. Allergies cloud my vision, nostalgia. The vines on the windowsill have claimed every last inch; they trail up the window blind strings and grow into each other inseparably. Big purple flowers are born at dawn. They die every afternoon and leave shriveled reminders of mortality on the dusty floor. I read of adventures in Europe two generations ago, of the liberty of pants, of rebellion in dirt; I adore her struggles and wonder what revolution remains, if it would make me free. The light nights rush past me and I curse my alarm clock, weep at the passing season and life.

My father brings a paper bag of things out of storage. A frying pan, a mixing bowl. He sneaks in a few old mix CDs, with tender words from a boy many years gone, written in the sleeve. I knew I was never going to love him, but I said the words first, if only to not always be a step behind. It ended shortly after. I don't know what my father was trying to say, but it only turned my gut. He left his girlfriend recently, sold the house. She looked just like me but it doesn't mean anything.

All my heroes end with their head in the oven
and I don't know why.

And Spin It

All I wanted was vodka numbness, to wash the dredges of a week off my soiled mind and forget the Everything. Instead I stood half sober at the unusually quiet street corner breathing deep into his neck and wondering what came after. The famous face walked past our quiet mooring and they were drunk yelling for a cab. Little streaks of light seeped through the buildings and it was still too dark to go home. 

I climbed the rocks to the edge of the city, sat in quiet amazement on the windy hill and watched the sun rise. A group of drunk boys sat nearby, tripped on the jagged cliffs and took in the summer songs; I don't know why. The city lay quiet at our feet, save those relentless birds, always those birds and I paused the music to hear their conversations. I wanted to lay down, wait for morning, wait for a sign but none was to be had. They threw their empty beer cans down the side of the mountain. Who could blame them, in their youth. 

This life passes by too quickly. You need someone who will up and go with you. But I still don't see myself as someone who moves. I could sit on this hill forever. 

The sign will not come. We make the signs where we want to see them. The wind picked up, turned cold. I left before they did. Envied them their youth. Their someone to sit still with. 

I returned to the apartment that isn't mine. Prayed this sleep will be the one that washes the vodka away. 

See It Spinning

The steps up to my apartment feel foreign. Like I left for more than a few days, like this is no longer my home and it's wrong to be back. Her apartment seems suddenly like a refuge, like a quiet nook where I am untouchable. Nothing of my own is there. I watch bad television and go to bed on time. The morning route to work is different, so I can pretend I am, too.

The week progresses into a pile of disasters and at every turn I come up short. Everyone seems to be falling to pieces and I carry their despairing shards in plastic bags around the city. Illness ravages my already weak body; she writes and says If you want your old room back, now would be a good time for it. The baby is due any day and I don't know how to not leave the ones I love the most. One week until summer solstice and I see the sky bright pink when I try to sleep. We should not waste this season on rest.

We should not waste this life
on anything but Living.

Åsö

From the bed I can see the edges of daylight, the never darkening sky. The street outside is quiet, different. I have stayed in her apartment before, that homeless summer when I dragged my bags to the homes of angels, but this is not the same place. She has dragged her bags too, bought a new life and tried it to make it hers. I wonder if she thinks the pieces fit. 

Some days I miss that summer. When the city was brand new and ever day only revolved around where to sleep, and to compensate sorrow with sunlight. Life is lived better in drama. These steady, reliable days do me no good. I push away the reeds that lean too heavy. 

Don't lean on me when the storm comes, my dear. I will fly my kite in the lightning and never notice you fall. 

Tegelön

Well, this is about as dark as it's going to get, he says, while we busy ourselves with clearing off dinner plates and wiping slugs off our abandoned shoes. To the east, the sky lies dark blue, but the western front is lined with orange and pink, and the sea reflects a silver glow. Stockholm hides beyond the pines; all the world is silent. 

We took the boat out in the archipelago, let the water spray on our thin summer dresses. She collects sharp tan lines on her shoulders, and the passing sail boats wave nonchalant shrugs in our general direction. My warm skin itched to dive in, and I jumped off the back of the boat into the cool, still waters between two islands before I had the chance to think twice. It should have been cold, the summer is still so young, but I swam and I swam and every stroke was as delicious as the one before. With every twirl underneath the surface, another dark, mauling month ran off my skin, and I climbed back onto the boat like a newborn, with no recollection of a winter in my bones. 

It is the same story, year after year and yet I never tire. The blissful amnesia, the overpowering conviction that the endless darkness is worth it. That this one moment, where the sun never sets and the air is thick with honeysuckle and birdsong, is enough to make you live a life and win the war. Thirty-one summers and yet each one is the very first. My eyes are wide open. 

I see a Life, and I take it. 

Blackbirds

The bar closes. The night's darkest hour, and it allows me to sneak in among the lilac bushes again, I can not help it. The music is loud in my ears as I make my way out with a fresh bunch in my giddy hands, and it is not until I'm back in my apartment with the windows open that I realize the birdsong outside. They are mad with the season--who can blame them? It is light before I go to bed, the sky dove-grey outside the bedroom window and sunrise near. Another work day looms but I try to wish it away. My father sends me links about the death of the Blog and I am deaf to his commentary. But my eyelids grow heavy.

Just book it, she says, and she is right.

It's time to go.

I already miss the mess I leave behind.

With a Smile, Girl

The weekend stows itself in a hundred moving boxes. The weather is hot, humid, the moment before thunder but it never arrives, and the citizens of the mid-size Swedish town spread their undressed bodies on the lawns and parks and beaches of its land. They all look the same, middle aged mothers with practical hairdos and their smiles upside down, the thin, browned girls of identical dress, the obnoxious men who never left and live loudly on former glories. I abhor meeting a single pair of eyes, for fear of recognition, but the years have been amassed, and I escape the past again. We biked across the old stone bridge as the sun set in fiery hues, and the river looked like black lava curling in around itself as it danced toward the lake, toward the sea, toward the inescapable cycle of its life and I wanted nothing more than to dive in and not resurface until the ice came.

I don't know that we need it, she says amidst ikea instructions and half-filled cabinets, but I do love to move in somewhere new. Her blood runs in my veins and burns my skin, I rejoice almost as much in this move as were it my own. The storaged version of my own past lies safely tucked into their basement room; it screams at me of the life I one had and what it is I think I am doing. I spend the night at a friend's; we kneel in the strawberry patch, tearing out weeds and searing our necks in the sunshine. I imagine I might want this, I think to myself but the thought tastes bitter and sticks in my throat. I'm beginning to see this trait not so much as an exotic quirk as a disease. 

The thing about roller coasters 

Is once you're on

How hard it is to step off. 

To Stand Still

The morning was foggy, I pulled my bicycle through the gate and worried about my light clothing. The hill tops of the South Island lay in the clouds, but down by the docks, all was still. We boarded the boat single-file, crossed our fingers for brighter forecasts, and left the Stockholm harbor behind.

The boat was full of giddy schoolchildren and tourists. We zig-zagged between little islands, their signals asking for a pickup, and as we slowed to our stop, the clouds lifted and let the sun shine on the lilac bushes and old wooden houses, glitter in the waters. 

Summer has arrived, after all. Despite my dark nights and deep sleeps, despite despair and drunken songs, it barrages through my defenses and attempts at escape, it carries on regardless and shines its sun until I cannot ignore it. Such is its magic, I surrender. 

An old train rolls through the June countryside. It smells of fifty years of travel and shakes in the turns. The rails are lined with lupines, someone opened a  window. When I was a child I would stick my head out, even though a severe sign said not to. It numbed the cheeks and turned the hair to dreads, but it was as close to freedom as I'd ever gotten. 25 years later, I've grown addicted to the feeling. 

She ain't going nowhere,

She's just leaving,

And if I knew how to stop

I'd like to think I would.