Generations

And I stood there, watching, as dad fought with mom to tear her out of the car. So that she couldn't drive off and kill herself. 
I was nine, but it was clear what was going on.
Your father was too young then, I don't think he knows.

The bar was growing quiet, Tuesday night on the soft, tree-lined streets of the Village and no one knew the storm was so close. My aunt sat before me old in her limbs but her words were those of a little girl. All your grandfather can say about that is that it wasn't the only time. 

My roommate tries to put on lunch for me, while I have my hands full with dishes. Her indulgence overwhelms me, feels sticky in its intrusiveness; I have to decline several times before she turns off the stove. You really don't like being mothered, do you? she says, and after four years it's like it's the first time she notices. After 31, it's like I can't get myself to stop.

I went back a few years ago, before she was too ill to remember. I guess I was hoping to hear that she wanted her children, at least. After all those years, she still couldn't so much as say that she loved us. But I guess we knew that already.

We parted ways on Seventh Avenue, as they caught a cab for Brooklyn. I walked down the quiet length of Bedford, overwhelmed with the story and the life.

Saw again how the blood runs so dark in our veins.

Ferried

Another day of sunshine, the little room in the Village shrinks and I must get out. I wander aimlessly down Seventh Avenue, weaving through busy worker bees on impossibly short lunch breaks and regret the lack of sunglasses. Manhattan in October is blissfully warm, kind, it refuses to remember the Storm that passed a year ago. I pass the Tower, it is enormous up close but the empty space from what was before remains. Some things New York refuses instead to forget. 

Battery Park is a mess of renovations, the ground is brown and barren, but the Statue of Liberty still beckons in the distance. I grow restless at the edge of the island, see the orange ferry close in on the dock, and I decide to go. Milling with the scores of tourists who heard about the priceless secret, I find a seat inside where no one stays who hasn't made the trip a hundred times before. Last time I sat here I got a root canal in a suburban haven in the middle of Staten Island, and the memory makes me shake my head. The water is not as brown as I remembered, it is a deep green, reminds me there is an ocean there, within reach. There's a line of planes landing at Newark. 

We pass Ellis Island, its bulbous towers tiny in the distance. Millions and millions of people passed through that one gate. Millions of people who had abandoned their every Safety, their every knowledge of what was life, of what was to come, for the dream that this would be better. Some never made it to the mainland. Most of them never again saw the Homes they had left. We pass the island quickly; despite the midday sun I shiver. 

On the return I end up first on the boat. The seats are strangely empty. The trip is telling me something. 

I can't figure out what it is. 

Monochrome

(My favorite part

of everyday 

is going to bed

in that apartment, 

by the window that faces

the courtyard

and looking out 

over the jagged buildings, the townhouses, the chimneys, the scattered 

lit windows and rustling trees, up to the 

never-dark sky and spotting maybe, just 

maybe, a star. 

It reminds me where I am, 

when I have forgotten. 

It calms

my troubled soul.)

In the Village

The air conditioner still sits in the window. There is no space for it inside, even once winter comes. It fits poorly, cold air rushes across my feet as I sit at the desk. The heat is on in the building; the pipes click, click, click at regular intervals, but I always seem to miss the steam when it comes. Finally I catch a cycle, the valve sputters and creaks and the vent hisses. It smells like dust and Christmas and a hundred New York winters.

In the hallway, a dying fire alarm beeps in echoes. An entire day passes as I disappear into countless wholesome Middle American family blogs, from crafty housewives and young parents creating a happy life for themselves. They make you wonder what life you have made for yourself. They make you question your scorn.

I wouldn't give this up for anything, your roommate says over red wine and acrylic paints. Being an artist is the only thing I ever wanted to be. She gave up the family, the bulging bank account, every sense of normalcy for a cramped West Village apartment with squirrels on the fire escape and making rich people coffee to pay the rent when times get tough. But every day she sits in that studio and creates queer images from her imagination; every day she is free. We are creatives, she says, we don't have a choice, you know.

There's an unease in your gut, but it is not entirely clear what it means. You return to your dusty room, close the browser windows, shake the questions out of your head.

I Wish I Had

There are padlocks on the windows, she says as she sends me a picture of sunset from her bed. The sky is a fiery purple, clouds straining in all directions and twinkling lights from the buildings outside. But there is no beauty in a sunset seen from an inpatient room in the emergency psychiatric ward. There is no rest in the sleep to be had there. How many years we have spent contemplating the looming clouds around us. I run to the ends of the earth to escape them. She is glued to the ground, like in that bad dream where you try to move but cannot, and they engulf her. She reminds me of Sylvia Plath. If only the image didn't end with her head in the oven. The allure of madness lies in abandoning what little hope there was.

My mother smiled. "I knew my baby wasn't like that."
I looked at her. "Like what?"
"Like those awful people. Those awful dead people at that hospital."
She paused.
"I knew you'd decide to be all right again."

I long for winter now, for the darkness to descend. I long for the chill to bring the happy people indoors, and leave me alone with my City Streets in the Hudson River winds. That giant trap of sunshine and foliage frivolity, of well-paying jobs and only time left over to spend the paycheck at swank bars because it's the thing to do, it beckons at my every step. I no longer know why I try to avoid it. Perhaps I don't, either.

"I'm writing a novel, I said. I haven't got time to change out of this and into that."

Fall

The air smells
of pumpkin spice
and chill
The yellowing birch leaves
outside my window
begin to twirl away
in the breeze
and the waning moon
climbs its solitary gait
over the courtyard's buildings

I sleep a heavy sleep
dream of holiday magic

amidst withering dreams.

Look Pretty

The neighborhood looks so different now, a whole city appeared across the river and is creating a scene, but everything is new, everything is clean. Her balcony has a view that's worth most of the rent alone. She says she loves to sit there, loves to look at it, the Empire State glowing grandly just across the water and all three bridges in the distance. It just reminds me of that summer in Greenpoint, and the feeling that the city is so close, but much too far away. I am glad to return to my snug Village street, with the City's ground safe beneath me.

Charles Bukowski came on the screen tonight, disgusting old pervert Bukowski with young women in his arms and dirty fingernails from too many cigarettes, he talks so much shit but then there's that moment. At the front of the stage, with those papers in his hands, and the words that come out make you nod your head out loud but weep a little inside. He says to keep the ember glowing, even through that job, even through doubt and rage, and one day even that little ember can spark a fire. The critics twist themselves inside out to infer meaning, paint allegory, but let them have their way, they can't change anything. His windshield has a giant crack down the middle. It's beginning to look like me. It reminds you.

You do not have to be good,
or right,
or beautiful,
at anything,

as long as you are amazing
with the Word.

Outside the Box

Put on your heels and sparkles, chimes a familiar voice, and the Lower East Side begins to glow. We toast to unknown adventures, to a Friday night in Manhattan. She says we live on the same street, and we describe stoops, steps, and curves of the ginkos to find our respective doors. Don't you know who lives there?! she says incredulously and lists the celebrities, but you do not care, it is your street now, you don't know how you could ever give it away to anyone else.

We skip the line at the door, velvet ropes parting and we sneak quickly upstairs to the boudoir. Appearances can be deceiving as naked women tease and play on stage, and a hostess wearing glasses twists in the drapes. The car goes to Brooklyn, you leave them in the street, it's such a familiar way home along Houston and you walk it like you know what you're doing. A Freedom Tower lights up in the distance, it is always there, at every corner, and you realize what a void the others left when they were no longer there. There's a sweet taste of pineapple on your lips, the last drink lingering as your feet grow tired under the full moon. Tomorrow you wake up in New York City, and the morning after, it is the best surprise you could wish for and you promise to never ask for anything else.

I keep saying I'm just going back to get it out of my system, you confide in her, but I'm beginning to see it's just a lie. You try to leave before you get left behind.

But your heart will bleed all over this island,
and there'll be nothing left to save, when you do.

On Mirrors

Eyes rest on your words, and they grow silent. You go to the top floor, to the back corner, to that sign that clearly says DO NOT SIT ON THE FLOOR and you sit down. It's that same book in your hand, you've been picking it up all week, the edges worn before you began but now the pages fold, too. You are too poor to buy it, you're reading it on layaway, one day you will bring it with you when you go. Big tears roll silently down your cheeks, but in that bookstore, on that soft carpet, you are safe. Seven years ago you sat in the exact same spot and let New York sink its teeth into your soft skin, nothing has changed.

I fall apart a hundred times a day, the pieces didn't magically weld together, we do not escape ourselves simply by running away. But all it takes is looking up Seventh avenue, to that stack of buildings in the distance, or the Empire State resting soundly beyond, ever present, ever watching, to make me breathe a little deeper, walk a little steadier. All it takes is remembering that I am here, now, and tomorrow as well, to make me sleep a little sounder at night.

When the pieces refuse to fit like they are supposed to, a puzzle board city to keep them from spilling into the void proves more valuable than first you knew.

Daffodil

The park is awash with Sunday afternoon perfection. Not a boat left to be rented, and the sunny side of the bridges are all selfies and bridal portraits, and look at that squirrel, how cute. She calls to tell of a tumultous Saturday too long in the making, and how sweet a Sunday morning when the company is right. I still wonder what your voice sounds like on Sunday morning, I've forgotten even its late night timbre. Perhaps it is just as well. I can't hear the words without hearing something else now. Her eyes glitter when she speaks. Age makes us cautious, but we are all teenagers at heart. I want to tell him I'll break his knees if he hurts her. Perhaps there'll be time for it yet.

Crawl into the bookstore at 82nd and Broadway, the escalator is broken, it has that right smell of coffee and carpet, dysmal lighting, the upper west side always had too many people in it and I never liked the way they felt against my skin. In the far corner, find the book, I wasn't going to stay but I'll sit for a little bit, rows of chairs, my bare legs stick against the plastic, turn a page and disappear. It dug its way in, like a thorn, like barbed wire and suddenly I'm crying in the bookstore, in the flourescent tube lighting, in the far corner of the upper west side and a hundred people I'll never look in the eyes, it doesn't matter. Sometimes I fear we are too broken, that this gash was deeper than we could ever have imagined, and we'll never recover after all. He says I envy you being there so much and it angers me. People say this a hundred times over and never go, always dream, fold themselves into their fears and excuses and grow bitter at the News Feed in front of them. If my shell of a person can do it, so can you. I am only amazing.

I am only hollow on the inside.

The Ides

The teenage boy in the townhouse next door comes home, 3 am he must be drunk. He turns on the kitchen light, 11 foot ceilings, the light floods the courtyard and makes a strange play across the yellowing birch leaves outside my window. He empties the contents of a huge tub from the fridge on a plate, pours a glass of chocolate milk, turns the light off as he leaves the room. The courtyard blackens again, dark rustling silhouettes and angular black buildings tower against the clouded gray skies. Overcast, autumn, it's mild as a summer night, you didn't wear a jacket out and you were fine. They didn't want to leave you in the street but don't they know that short stairway under the street is familiar to you everywhere in the city, don't they know the steady rumbling of subway trains is your best lullaby home? The F train rolls slowly down its decline, first just a drop of light in the distance, then a sliver, then a steady beacon, don't they know it'll roll you straight to west 4th street and you can walk the rest of the way blindfolded, lord knows you've done it enough.

The city looks so still from back here when all the lights are off. Wailing cats are the only sound, even the sirens have gone home now. He asks you if it was all that you hoped and you don't know the right words for it was better than I could have dreamed. It's no different than before, nor are you. But that's the point.  

It was never broken.

There was nothing to fix. 

Shuttle

Turn a corner and a perfect reflection of the Chrysler building glitters in the glass skyscraper across the street; it is a postcard, it is a cliché of New Yorkness and you fall for it with no reservations. Let your heels click-clack across the late-night quiet main floor of Grand Central Station and feel like you own it. How much smaller it gets in real life. The other day I rode the 6 train past my stop, past the following stops; I rode it all the way to the end and crossed the rails to take the next one back up to where I was supposed to be going. Standing on that rocking train felt too much like home, and I never wanted it to end. I walk crooked ways home through the West Village mazes. There is a certain, golden yellow light that hits the autumn trees in the Village and makes the whole neighborhood a quiet magic.

And these streets smell, all the time they smell of garbage and bleach and subway sweat and misery. And it is impossibly expensive to live here, and just when you begin to relax this city will find a way to kick you in the face. And there will come a day, or two, or 50, when you will doubt if it is worth all the sacrifice to live here, and if you couldn't have a better life elsewhere, safer, calmer, more reasonable according to the checklist.

But perhaps that's what love is. That year after year, through compromise and sacrifice and questioning your own sanity for staying in, there comes a moment, where you look up, and everything bathes in that magic golden glow, and that feeling rushes through your chest like you just fell in love for the first time all over again and every doubt was worth the wait.

I doubted.
I did.
But I can't for the life of me
remember why
now.

Hudson and 10th

The sun sets in that ridiculous hue of pink, all overcast smog-filled over-saturated isn't-there-an-instagram-filter-just-like-this and it takes your breath away. Little beads of light trickle down Christopher Street as you turn the corner, because it's been too many years and your gut cannot navigate these crooked Village cross streets like it used to. You still find your way eventually. We get drunk on perfect margaritas and sit outside because hell if it isn't warm enough despite that storm that passed through last night, and he tells you stories of the West as you wonder of the marvel from whence you both came.

There was a moment today, when I walked home down Houston, and the people whirled around me like ignorant bees in the pursuit of their Dream, and the sunlight warmed just so against the skin, and the New York City Promises of Tomorrow played some made up ball game at the edge of the court only they could understand, and I crossed the street at the red light because I knew the cars would be coming just like that and it was fine, that every doubt that had crossed my mind was silenced. Every question mark and sad Stockholm evening staring at the radio tower in the distance and thinking what the hell am I doing this for receded into a quaint memory of the naive past. We went to that other bar, the one you loved and where he looked at you with smiles in his eyes so many years ago, and the Empire State Building lit up the corner of the park where you all sat with your deli lunch and unaccustomed heat flush before the map had connected in your mind, and it was all laughs as though nothing was out of the ordinary at all. I forget, so easily I forget, just a week in and this should all be new but it doesn't feel like it. This city made you. This city is every cell in your dilapidated body, is every breath in your trembling mind, is every answer in your foully constructed illness.

It seems ridiculous in its simplicity, but isn't that always the way? When we find the answers, we realize we had them with us all along.

This city is the blood that courses through your veins. You have not been, without it.

And now you are, again.

Epic

She's a writer, the drunk voice calls at the end of the bar. We're so many bottles in, we're so many dollars in and who cares I'll look at the tab tomorrow. We chat up the gay boy whose partner works the bar; we sneak out the back door and saunter into the musical chairs singalong on Christopher. Good luck catching a cab on Seventh Avenue but you send them off in a yellow SUV before turning the West Village corner where you belong and the street is so short even at night.

Two and a half years, can you believe it? but no one can. I can't remember what happened in the in-between. You sway softly in the safe nook that is these streets, that is this city, that is this language, and by the end of the night are you not friends with everyon at the bar? The dog remembers you; he is old,  but he lies in the fold of your arm as though nothing had changed. The bartender passes through with the tip jar; I have an operation on Wednesday. She explains it's her birthday. We cannot help but laugh at it all. Weren't we best friends before the hiccup? Catch your breath and find nothing has changed.

The tiny room on Morton Street lies unchanged from your absence. You crawl in, brush your teeth, try not to wake anyone up despite the papier maché walls and tomorrow will be just as hot and humid again, it's a ruse. Your winter clothes lie untouched in their crowded closet space. You sleep a delicious, heavy sleep but without dreams. What dreams could you have?

You are here.

Slow Dance

From afar it looks like a fairytale.

They paint the scenes in movies, in magazines and war stories, they make it out to be a place for the wildly succesful, the impossibly beautiful. They make it the unrechable dream, and they put it in your head that perhaps you only imagined there was a place for you in it, and that you would fall off the edge if you stepped onto its land.

I walked up the avenues last night, the 9-5 crowds making waves around me and the afternoon still sweltering. Stepped quietly into the Park and climbed up onto those cliffs, the same as last time and the same as the time before that. Seven years I've been coming to this spot and it wrings my heart every time, I wanted to tell the people around me, as they Instagrammed their iced teas. The sun began to set over the West Side, little beams streaking through the buildings and all the skyscrapers had that certain, incandescent hum about them.

When the evening grew dark, but still with that Mediterranean humid heat and little beads of sweat made their way down my back in sheer surprise, I walked down Sixth avenue in a daze. Every street corner, every twist and turn into the West Village nook that is mine, was a familiar scene, was an unconscious move because I have done it a hundred times before. And yet every time I looked up, did I not lose my breath just a little, did my eyes not twinkle a little more than before?

They make you think this place is not for you, that there's no bother in coming. But they do not know how New York concrete under your steps make you a little more steady on your feet, how the scent of warm cigarette smoke and restaurant exhaust perfume in your lungs make your back a little straighter. They do not know how yellow cabs in the corner of your eyes and cop sirens in your window as you fall asleep make you a little calmer, a little safer in this life.

New York,
You may be a fairytale,
in their eyes.

But to me,
you will always be
just home.

On Magic

At the edge of the river lies an island that knows my name when I forget it myself.

For a moment, for a minute, I am whole.