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.