Return on Investment

Fingers tremble at the weight of the bags. Nerves tremble at the Everything Else. You calculate hours, count minutes. A mistral wind blows through the canyon and ruffles the leaves, but didn't the summer sun return at last? 

So tell me your plans, tell me your life, he says kindly. But to pour one's heart out to a bank branch manager and evaluate its weight in figures and coins; I shudder and paint another story entirely. My credit card expands and I think maybe it was a good one, after all. Pack it in with the rest of the loose ends and pray the bag will survive the journey. 

New York lies quiet in the distance, impossible to see or hear, and still

I know it's there, glittering with promise and whispers of dreams forgotten. If I calm my racing mind, for just a moment, don't I hear it calling, can't I feel it still move slowly in my veins? 

Four hours until liftoff. 

New York, honey, 

I'm coming for you. 

Weathered

The heavy cover of clouds lifts slowly, reluctantly from the mountains. It leaves behind it the thinnest hint of snow, draped across the peaks and misting into the slopes. By nightfall the valley lies pitch black under a sea of stars, the big dipper suddenly huge and looming, and the air turns freezing against unsuspecting skin.

I sat in silence for a few days, watched the passing of the clouds. For a few nights, the grinding teeth left an ache in my jaw, but little by little, it subsided. The apathetic stares and ignorant gut lingered for a bit, but somehow they began to turn. It rained and rained and I ground myself into a pulp, but when that sun returned did not everything look different, again?

In two days I return to New York. To the City I have loved, and lost, for years on end. I have struggled, I have feared, I have made this decision in the most crooked fashion, but here we are. There's only forward now.

After the snow storm, the sun returned, with its desert heat and dry promise of perpetual summer. The snow recedes. All is forgotten.

A sliver of red remains on my cheeks.

Where You Go

Close to midnight and the streets in the little town are empty. Monday night, family night, no one would be out, every street light is green until the mouth of the canyon. A half moon disappears behind looming mountain peaks; they are invisible in blackness, but I know they must be there because they always have been. A few miles in, when the few lights of the valley disappear, the ridges reappear, dark grey contours against a blacker sky, a loud silence that appears when the radio frequencies no longer can. I turn up the static, set my sights on the lights at the dam, and I push a little harder on the gas.

I saw in your words something that broke my heart and I cannot listen to them again, I'm sorry. I know the view; I've looked in through that window and I just don't think I can open it again. It may be better to swallow hard, order another beer, pretend the mistake won't be made again.

Third time's a charm.

We don't know anything of what lies ahead, though.

Fort Union Blvd.

The days pass in a vacuum. Every morning a new sunrise over the mountains, each one different and I sit quiet in wonder and watch the morning mist rise, the hillsides turn auburn with approaching frost, the mountain peaks grow pink with sunlight. One quiet moment of solitude before the house wakes and the day begins. 

And so it is that I stroll the aisles of the SuperStore, inhaling the scent of America, and feeling utterly lost. Is this where I live, now? Is this what I am doing with my life and how is everyone else doing it so effortlessly? The desire to consume rises in me, to shop my way to happiness and fulfillment. I long for crafts and hot apple cider and fall foliage trips. My old college roommate expresses her grief and broken families, and I realize we are suddenly in a land where I can put words to those feelings myself. That I have lived the last two years in a language where I do not know how to say anything meaningful, so I simply haven't. 

America courses through my veins. Hesitantly, still, in the vacuum that is desert sunshine and Rocky Mountain conservatism, but it whispers to me that I can rest now, for a bit. It makes believe I have come home. 

In the Morning

Jet lagged, I wake up just in time to watch the full moon set behind the mountains in the west. The sky is still pitch black and filled with stars. Nights here are always star-lit, always a canvas of the universe, but they are breathtaking every time. She writes to tell me of her day, we could just as well be a few blocks apart as a thousand miles.

The coffee seeps in its French press; my father ground the beans last night so I wouldn't have to go without, we know the drill. You'll wake up at five, probably. When I was little and we had just returned from Australia that first time, we would hear one another stir in the middle if the dark January night and soon would all be up for a midnight breakfast of tea and toast. That memory soothes me year after year. We are travelers. I pull out the gallon jug of milk, so American in its weighty essence and scratch the rash on my arm. My body processes where my mind cannot. 

Burn it all to the ground. 

Start over. 

Valley

There's a strong wind in the night, but the air is desert warm and dry. The airport smelled like scented body sprays and home. A full moon guided us through the mountain pass like so many times before, while we spoke of the lost souls he's taken under his wing and decided to make whole. Nobody pays you to be a good professor. It is in his blood.

A voice from across the ocean says good morning. A text from the news says he is dead and it was a day for tumultuous change yesterday, wasn't it. Somewhere in the back of my mind says You are homeless now you have nothing but I am not ready to hear it yet. Soon, soon I will understand. 

My eyelids fight a losing battle. My eyes so heavy. I fall asleep before the song is even through. 

Transit

Welcome to Chicago, the voice booms across the speaker. It seems warm out, I sweat in my jacket and scarf and I didn't need all these clothes but they kept the weight out of my checked suitcase and that was worth it. I leave my sister at a California-bound gate, am suddenly alone after the social whirlwind of the last few days, avoid trying to see what I'm feeling. I don't want to know. 

I sit down at an empty gate. It fills slowly, turns into a LaGuardia wait; I look at the people around me and wonder if it is obvious they are going to New York. It is not. Everyone looks like America. 

Everything looks like home. 

Something new is coming now. I do not know what it will be or how my place in it will appear. All I know is that I have no choice but to roll with the punches. I chose the rolling stone, I will lie in the bed that I made. 

And it will be okay

Because it has to. 

Nerves.

The apartment has an echo to it, now. The floors turn the soles of my feet black from grime, but the shelves and walls are empty. The hallway is lined with the remains of a life, destined now for the recycling bin, mere morsels saved for the leap. One day remains. One day of removing any clues of my existence from this tiny corner, of removing myself from the embrace of those I have grown to love so terribly in these gut-wrenching Stockholm years. One day of closing the door softly behind me, only to open another behind which I don't know what lies. Third time is a charm. A dozen moves under my belt; my mother calls with envy in her voice over the delightful tickle of clearing out and packing up. We are addicts for the New.

In the stress of departure, in the sadness that builds in my chest for imminent farewells, I forget the adventure that lies ahead. I forget how close I am to glueing my broken heart back together again.

The vision leaves me panting on the floor, gasping for air, trying to hold on to something, anything, to keep from falling. This is no life. The money, the apartment, the stocked pantry and vacation plans. They don't mean anything to me. They let me sleep soundly at night, but I don't want to sleep.

I want to live.

A long-deserted corner of my soul begins to stir.
Prepare for whatever it is that lies ahead.

Tragedy

The birds sing a song entirely out of season; I wake up thinking its Spring. Quickly the countdown reappears in my head: three days to departure, three days before this all needs to be empty and clean and the merciless judgment of what goes and what stays behind has been finished. Every night is a struggle against my failing discipline; the bartender pours another drink despite my shaking head and we all giggle in the sweetness of separation anxiety. The tab when it finally comes ends at four dollars and still I stumble home through the street. The sentiment is not lost on me. These may be the last days we spend together like this, ever, you said, and the words have been punching me in the gut ever since. I got so used to going that I forgot what it meant to leave.

Perhaps if I wear myself down enough times,
one day I will move and not feel a thing.

Perhaps that is the sisyphean boulder I will forever hope to leave
at the top of the hill.

Pelikan

Let's pretend we'll see each other again before you go, and we don't have to say goodbye now, he says, and I play along. I hate the goodbyes. The street is empty, now, the bar has emptied out. We stay past closing, listen to the music no one would ever dare admit to loving, put our empty glasses at the end of the table, resign ourselves to the End.

No more Wednesday nights at Pelikan.

And all you can think is, the lights at the other side of the ocean must be terribly bright, to be worth such sad sacrifice before the leap.

And So Cold

Stockholm refuses to go down without a fight. The sun shines a little brighter in the early autumn winds, the water sparkles. We go for swims after work, the channel runs cool perhaps, but clear, untroubled. Yellow leaves lie in cobblestone gutters, like sprinkled jewels before the end. We cannot believe it is fall. She treats me to dinner and the Tuesday night lies silent, empty in the streets. No one would know everything is about to change.

I fell asleep on the lawn in front of the church today. This church that has seen me through my late nights, my misty eyes, my stumbling question marks as the streets wound in confusing twists through my innards, and now I slept like a baby at its feet. This city is safe, now, it fits neatly in my pocket and I can carry it with me, if I need to. The remaining days are few, but they are filled to the brim with sweet smiles and all the warmth that will fit in a suitcase. The drug of departure seeps through my veins, replenishes my parched skin.

It's impossible to deduce the winner of the duel, yet.

Carry Me Home

Is it okay if we come by in half an hour, instead? her voice says over the phone. And the day I had planned, of cleaning up my mother's bicycle in anticipation of its departure, of playing the piano until my fingers bled before I bid it goodbye, it slipped through my fingers as I rushed to pack the last of the books in a blue IKEA bag. I jumped quickly out of the waters yesterday, to greet the passing friends, I carried out my piano in a mad dash today, amidst invitations of coffee and polite conversations; it is no coincidence. I allow for no long goodbyes, I do not revel in the departure. After my aunt had driven off with my dearest possessions, to store them for unknown days and years far from my reach, the day lay like an open gash in the Indian summer sunshine. We took a long walk across the channel, fell into lunch with a baby in my arms, sat for hours and innumerable glasses of wine on the town square; the day was perfect. The neighbors passed by and we realized this was it.

I know I am saying my goodbyes. I know I am holding onto your company a little more desperately, a little more dearly, and perhaps you will grow tired of it before too long. But I am stocking up on your stories, I am etching the sound of your voice into the folds of my heart. A week from now, you will still have a life, you will have a morning coffee and silly text messages, you will still go to the bar and get too drunk for a weekday night. A week from now, the trees will be a little more yellow, but you will still remark how mild the season, how kind the sunshine. And the apartment at the top of the hill will be empty. I will be long gone.

I am glad this day turned out like nothing I had planned.

There is no planning
a goodbye
such as this.

June 4, 2009

journal excerpt:

I am mostly nauseous. Inexplicably nervous and terrified. So much at the precipice, at the final step before a giant leap and I see the jagged cliff and unending darkness in the jump. 

But I do jump. I do not fall. 

Tomorrow I move to New York. 
Tomorrow, years of dreaming and longing
reach their unimaginable end. 
Tomorrow I try to patch the Lack, 
to deny the Void,
to make my half whole. 
I know it will not satisfy me;
that is the whole point of the lack. 
But it doesn't matter. 

Tomorrow is a dream come true. 

the Grind

Like every hug is the last. Like we don't know if this is the one, will we remember the chill in the air, the soft hum of the street, the unspoken words that became our last. I walk across the park to the apartment at the top of the hill and I don't know how many more times I'll do it. The church is steady, lies firmly planted where it should and I steal another glance. Soon, this will all be over. It is dark now, the stars are out but you can't well see them for all the light noise. I don't know how many more times I'll walk those streets, how many more times we will laugh at the bar, how many more times the view over Stockholm town will take my breath away as I roll down the hill to work.

I want you to know that I saw you, that I see you still. I want you to know that I am not, without your smiling eyes in my mind.

That I would not be, if I didn't think we'd walk this street, again.

To Watch and Learn

Oh, I’m sailin’ away my own true love
I’m sailin’ away in the morning
Is there something I can send you from across the sea
From the place that I’ll be landing?

No, there’s nothin’ you can send me, my own true love
There’s nothin’ I wish to be ownin’
Just carry yourself back to me unspoiled
From across that lonesome ocean

Oh, but if I had the stars from the darkest night
And the diamonds from the deepest ocean
I’d forsake them all for your sweet kiss
For that’s all I’m wishin’ to be ownin’

Oh, how can, how can you ask me again
It only brings me sorrow
The same thing I want from you today
I would want again tomorrow

I got a letter on a lonesome day
It was from her ship a-sailin’
Saying I don’t know when I’ll be comin’ back again
It depends on how I’m a-feelin’

Well, if you, my love, must think that-a-way
I’m sure your mind is roamin’
I’m sure your heart is not with me
But with the country to where you’re goin’

What's Right

What's the first thing you'll do when you get to New York? she says, and the timing is impeccable, because the bartender knows how to play the song just as your skin tickles. I think of lugging those bags up the stairs at Morton Street. I think of an early morning walk through the Village, of drinks after work with faces I've missed, of sunset over the Hudson and a familiar voice in the subway tunnels. What's the second thing you'll do? she says, and all you can think of is how you can't stop smiling, and all you can answer is You know, live a life. 

There is too much, now, too many bags left to pack and too many tearful goodbyes. All you can think of is the pain of departure, the question marks amassing in your head. But no matter.

One day this will be a quaint memory of times loved and lost. One day this will be what you gave up to walk the streets that never stopped running through your heart strings.

I haven't told you yet 
but I'm gonna be with you. 

Count. Down.

Two weeks from today, I hear my own voice say, explaining with a smile to half-strangers the inner workings of my non-existent plans. Feel a blush at the nonsense I speak. In the apartment, a temporary life lies turned upside down, awaiting judgment. Return to the scene of the crime and feel my stomach turn. The lights are on, but I refuse to look them in the eye. Get drunk instead and sleep for days. Two weeks from today. The leaves at the edge of the tree outside my window have begun to turn yellow. The mornings are cold. My parents call and say they still need the AC in the afternoons.

I don't have time to tell you good-bye.

It's only my disease speaking. I sneak out when no one's looking.

The clinch in my jaw is back.