2013; an End

Scribbles in a random notebook,
from sometime in the fall:

Remember why you are fighting,
why you are here. 

You are here to love this 
City,
and to write. 
As long as you do that,
then the means by which 
you do it are irrelevant.

Even if you live in a tiny room,
and save your pennies to 
afford those drinks,
and work whatever jobs come
up that'll do you no good 
on your Resume,

As long as you love New York
and Write,
Then you are winning the War.

Bring it on, 2014.
I am here.

(Later)

The burn mark on my arm begins to peel. It looks a little like a Superman badge. I don't dress all day. When the dog begins pacing, I simply drape myself in a long winter coat and a knit hat and no one on the street can tell there isn't much underneath. Temperatures have dropped; we walk with hurried steps around the block and he seems as relieved as I when we return.

I spend the evening with a storm in my head: gathering clouds and dark whirlwinds. I write in my journal If I am going to be alone, and poor, and so tragically sad, then at least I want to produce some magic in the process.

The night is lighter after that. The storm arranges itself into decipherable language.

Despair is easier to digest
on paper.

Little Fish

The end of the year, always this pale skin and fading breath. My energy falters; I feel the life recede as surely and as quickly as the tide, and all I can do is stand on the shore and try to hold on as best I can. It will pass. My body falls apart, I sit on the kitchen floor gasping for breath, and there's no telling what lifted lid released the demons. The dog paces anxiously, will not settle until nestled in along my left leg.

For a week, there was silence in this wretched mind of mine. There was peace and ignorant bliss, and I reveled in it like a desert in rain, smiling in all the right places and entertaining the ideas of strangers and futures unknown. But the room is silent now, and the ghosts begin to whisper again in the walls. I will not deny I have missed them: there is comfort in familiarity. But their adoration is cloying, they strangle what little air is left in this room until I am reduced to rubble under their thumb.

This is the life you chose. You were so proud in your disdain of other fates. You eat your words now.

Choke on them as they are going down.

Bells

It is still light when we end up in the East Village: lunch time and nowhere to go but onward. We stumble drunkenly out of the wine bar to the tiki lounge where the drinks are too sweet and into the alphabet bar where it all felt like home. Our clothes are all out of place but the beers are forgiving and you leave your number to the man who looks like Jesus. 

The cabbie speaks of the falafel place on MacDougal and 3rd because it is better than anything else and Should I take you there now? But you are too close to home to change your minds now. The Christmas duck lingers on your tongue while you think of Cairo. 

It is only the means to an end, you yell at him, between sips of PBR and lemon. Don't ever forget why you are doing this, and it will all be worth it. 

The New York night hums in your ear drum. 

You remember. 

Interim

My sister comes to town. The temperature drops 40 degrees in a day, and we hurry our freezing limbs to favorite spots around the City. Christmas day every street is empty except Fifth avenue and the meandering hills of Central Park, where a hundred languages crowd with innumerable iPhones. How many times do they ask me to take their picture? I must look like I will not run off with their camera.

The words amass in scribbled notes and lingering dreams. Every night I go to bed tired, and content.

We make plans for the morning. They will keep, if we will it.

Solstice

On the year's shortest day, the city thaws. I peel off layers of clothes, and the tables outside the  restaurant on the corner are full. She wears a Christmas dress but her legs are bare; we are all confused by the season. Waiting for the elevator, their hallway has that musty, warm scent like the Franklin Street apartment in Brooklyn, and for a moment, the promise of New York washed over me anew. Do you remember that time, when you were so new to the city, you asked if I feared the coming of winter darkness, and I said "Not since coming here". I meant it then, it is years ago now, but I mean it just as much still. Sunset was slow and warm tonight, the red brick buildings on fire around seventh avenue.

I've been tired, so tired lately. I neglect my friendships, my to-do lists, my inner workings as I race to pick up hours and fasten my foothold on these streets. But winter hit its rock bottom today, it is all lighter every day from now on.

I decide the same will hold true for myself.

In Motion

When some people talk about money

They speak as if it were a mysterious lover

Who went out to buy milk and never

Came back, and it makes me nostalgic

For the years I lived on coffee and bread,

Hungry all the time, walking to work on payday

Like a woman journeying for water

From a village without a well, then living

One or two nights like everyone else

On roast chicken and red wine.

The Good Life

Tracy K. Smith

Re:bound

Returning to JFK early on a Monday morning, before dawn has even spread its palette over the Rockaway swamps, when only tired worker bees fill the trains (and me sleeping against a pole), and the remains of a cold snow stretch in icy patches across Leroy Street before the nuns close the school doors, is a sweet, quiet kind of homecoming. I sit on the train again later, composing my work self and I realize I don't have to convince myself to smile. The faces on the train rest, worry, look away but no matter; I am already smiling and unable to stop. Returning to these streets, even if after such a short time apart, is an unexpected honeymoon in my butterflied chest.

The darkness is not gone; I carry no such delusions. But it rests, mute, on a back shelf in a tiny room on little tree-lined Morton Street in the Village, while I ride this train up and down the island, smiling. The darkness will be here still (always), but it is not my next of kin like it used to.

I found something better
to take its place.

Gate

The moon is nearly full, again, so often I see it beam across the mountains and light them in eerie silhouettes. Tonight, with the blanket of snow, they seem to glow. I sit in the steaming water on the back porch, watching the smoke curl off my skin and into the twilight. Expecting epiphany, as always, but receiving only inner calm. I will take it. 

I sit at the gate again, the same gate as not long ago, but how much more my nerves trembled then. The pieces fell into place while I was away: a future stretches into the distance suddenly, where before every road was unimaginable. It paints itself in giddy colors and reassuring patterns. It gives me a foothold, and a spark. 

I am arriving. 

En Reves

(I dreamed last night 

You kissed me

And said

"We must keep this a secret",

And I agreed,

You were right. 

Only,

When I woke,

I saw you'd ask that

Of me

Forever

And it made me

Sad. 

But I didn't want it 

Any less.)

Your Eyes

You missed the snow, she writes, as the inches amass on Manhattan, but it isn't true. The mountains here are full of it. I wake early on the first morning and see pink streaks slide across the slopes and turn into sunlight; it looks freezing. Icicles line the windows, but the horses are still out in the field across the road. I shiver. 

I forget my phone, and it overflows with errands and conversations. A life continues, whether I keep up with it or not. The swelling silence of the West begs me to breathe, to be still; I itch to go back, to get started. There is a life in New York that is aching to be lived. 

It is mine. 

Assess

The warm rains passed and New York City is swept over in a breath of icy air. We go to Houston Street and buy a Christmas tree; it is too big when we get home. Same procedure as every year. We laugh. 

We were living in different countries entirely at the time, she says over coffee in their sunny walk-up in Brooklyn, but then the earthquake hit. And I realized he was the one thing I could not live without. 

I leave their home exhausted from the week and the life, but happy. Perhaps it isn't so difficult, after all. Perhaps when it is right the pieces fall into place on their own, and all you have to do is let them. You will not be afraid, like you thought you would. 

I rode the A all the way to West 4th street, walked the freezing but quiet corridor down Cornelia street to my stoop. Perhaps when it is right, you will know it. 

Crumbles

It's a day of waiting for trains. Hours waste away in the depths of the City, as I stare down into the darkness of the tunnel, hoping for light. Stare long enough at the rails and you will see it; you will imagine it grows with approaching transit. I am tired, so tired now, and I just want to arrive. I entertain the idea of walking in there to meet it but freeze just at the entrance. 

Instead I take unsatisfying breaths that do not fill my lungs like I wish. 

There is never enough air

down here. 

Excerpt

"When you're tired of New York, you're tired of life. 

But I was really only tired of myself."

Before Swine

They text to say they're just up Hudson Street. It's been a day of words and undress; I scramble to make the appropriate adjustments to society. We order another round, and another, even though it's a school night, and the bartender gives us a round on the house because it's Tuesday, and somebody should be getting drunk.

He says You have to know if you are here temporarily or if this is your permanent home, because it will dictate how you live, and I can't begin to decide what kind of life I am leading. I don't have a home at all, I say, but the arguments don't make sense out of context. The bar is another than it used to be, but you fall instantly in love with it and the walk home is so short, even in your stupor.

She is still up when you get home. We sit for hours, poring over her paintings and trying to decipher meaning. I thought I was painting happy childhood memories, she implores, but all you see are abandoned animals despondently slumped in dark corners. Here I thought I wasn't making art, and I wasn't revealing anything. You tell her the same goes for your writing.

You wish it wasn't as transparent
as it always is.