Decades

I used to wonder how you could do it. How, when spring was finally returning and the sun shining. How, when the worst was behind us and your laugh was so infectious. All the best was yet to come and it was such a beautiful morning. Still you opened that window and closed your every door. It's been ten years today, and I didn't realize until I walked up seventh avenue crying, muffling the sounds because my father was at the other end of the line. Tell us something fun, he said.

It was a beautiful day today, too, if freezing. And I cried, not because I didn't understand. But because I did. 

It was an awfully high building. 

I am still afraid of heights. 

Sometimes we fall when we don't mean to. 

Avocado Pears

Home returns in pieces. In liquid East Village brunches and short glimpses of elusive skyscrapers from the High Line park. In scents of warm mulch and dirty asphalt, sounds of sirens. I slept for hours one day and didn't leave the house except to walk the poor dog in pouring rain. Comfort in closed doors, trying to repair the broken seams and replace the filling that fell out when I wasn't paying attention. I take out notebooks and Bic pens, trying to make sense of what my gut has been telling me. Home returns in words.

It occurs to me that not every one makes their life this crooked. That not every one twists and turns these Questions into unrecognizable daggers that can never be carved out of their hearts.

To be honest, I don't know why I do it.

To be honest, I don't know now how to stop.

Sides

(When you got nothing,
you got nothing to lose)

Buzz

There is sand inside my phone case. I hesitate to take it off for fear of scratching it, but perhaps I'm more afraid of losing the last grains of warm vacation airs and the levity of Elsewhere. 

We ride the rush hour train to JFK; an earlier incident, of course, and the train is both late and chock full, but we squeeze in and the baby never wakes. I leave them at the AirTrain entrance, this sterile hallway of white and windows, and my tears look ugly and out of place in its air. Three months will pass quickly, she says, but we know that's not it. These are just the things we tell ourselves to ease the weight in our chests. 

The trains are delayed going back as well. The evening grows dark, and freezing, as the text comes in from across the seas. We're engaged. Perhaps we can set the wedding so you'll be home for it, too. 

Eventually, the Friday night A train into Manhattan, into my dirty crooked streets, my tiny room in the Village, back to the one place where none of those sorrows fit. I smile before we even reach the East River. 

Remember it is worth the every lost grain of sand. 

Pay Attention now

A whooshing sound in my ears, shaky legs like trying to stand on the ocean. The alarm clock doesn't sound like mine, I awake not sure who I am, or where, but this life is unchangeably mine. Four days have passed in a vacuum of early mornings and late nights, of a quickly disappearing tan line and a devastatingly cold New York, the return has been all sorts of unkind. My vision goes blurry before I reach Delancey. I count down the hours. 

Hoping to land, eventually, on the ground. 

Gate 4

The airport is coolly air conditioned, the usual collections of entirely diverse travelers, tired security personnel, and overly made up duty free salespeople. Outside the tall windows, a bright afternoon sun beams on the tarmac and the deep blue sea beyond. I shift uncomfortably in my seat, my gut unwilling to accept departure. Images of dark New York streets and the early alarm clock tomorrow nag at my edges. I was not ready to go. You are never ready to go. The baby waved a frantic giggling goodbye at the curb and it broke my heart to leave him, to not wake up every morning to his smile but know that he is growing up without his aunt around him. He deserves to take my presence for granted, and the fault is all mine that he can't. It begins to mean more that I leave people. They are not filler materials for my literary backdrops. Perhaps they never were; I've just been too ignorant to see it. 

The conditioned air cools the droplets of sweat on my brow. Zips me back up into composure. The flight to America appears on the screen, announces its On Time departure. Tomorrow is F train commute and business as usual. This softness of my skin will harden again. 

Caribbean Blue

Used clothes lie in a pile of sand and sweat on top of the dresser. A long-sleeved cardigan laughably out of place, untouched. I overpacked, I always overpack, I could have survived this trip on a sundress and a pair of flip flops, I see that now. I do not prepare the water jugs in the fridge tonight, do not arrange the beach bags or scour maps for undiscovered treasures. Tomorrow, instead, is travel again, is that sad cardigan and lace-up sneakers and arriving LaGuardia at several degrees below freezing and my brown skin will have rubbed off in transit. Impossible to imagine the disappearance of such a week. A final dive in the ocean, watching my changed skin revel in itself, my fingers sweeping through the turquoise water like some painting unreal, of course I was reluctant to go. I have forgotten an entire life, abandoned it wholly for this fantasy. And now it is over.

My eyes close on their own accord, my limbs tired from the sweetness. I lie in the sweltering room, tiny beads of sweat in my temple. Breathe deeply the heavy air of Elsewhere. 

Meditated

Today,

Floating on the salty sea,

Little puffs of cloud 

floating by,

I solved all the Great

Questions

and saw my life

Spread out

before me

Like a hundred lives

of possibility,

That when I returned

to shore,

My skin dripping,

My limbs aching,

I was born again

and felt

Brand

New.

8 Degrees North

It's the spongy grainy bread and the ubiquity of Crunchie chocolate bars in supermarkets that remind me of Oz. Nothing else seems to. The waters are calm, even on windy days only amounting to soft swells near the shore. There's a slowness to the beach-goers, an absence of surfer curls, and I find myself longing for neon-colored zinc paste. The heroine in my book discovers race and my white guilt flops about uselessly around its edges. I devour books down here, rediscovering muscles in my imagination long since made redundant by the constantly flickering computer screen. It pleases me. 

I idealize Australia, of course, it has called me since long before New York was the superlative dream. So often I fear I will not conquer it in my short life, yet at the back of my spine lies the resolve that I must. A simpleness of conviction. Soothing. 

My energy stores have been replenished. I forget the long, dark winter and the sallowness of my steps. Life begins again, now.

I will live it. 

Records

Island life sinks its soft teeth into me. I begin to forget the everyday hustle, the gray cold, the beckonings of my growing inbox. Resting in a sun chair with the baby sleeping in my arms, I weave tales and write letters in my head, but come evening I am too tired and fall asleep without a single word on paper. 

We went to the little lagoon today, arrived early and fought only iguanas for our shady spot. While the others rested, I took the snorkeling gear and crept along the coraled walls of the bay. It always seemed so strange to me, to breathe underwater and immerse oneself in a whole other world. I hung silently with countless yards of open water below me, dangling my feet over my fear of heights and floating weightless. Tropical fish swayed with the rhythm of the waves, the rasping sounds of grazing parrotfish pecking at my attention. In front of me, a tiny purple squid lay waving  without moving, and I realized suddenly I was in the middle of the entire shoal. A mountain of overgrown concrete steps told stories of the past, but I had no history. Only the regular breathing through a tube to the surface, only the observation of a hundred animals I'd never known, only the impossibility of flying and a space that was all my own. 

My limbs are tired at night, but I dream such strange, involved dreams before sunrise. Rolling waves follow me into sleep. 

At Bay

My skin is sticky, salty, newly acquired tan lines stretching taut against my seams but not unpleasant. I steal an aloe vera leaf from a hotel we pass, running its sticky insides against my pinkening skin. He says Is that how you're supposed to do it? and all I can retort is That is how my mother always did it, and it seems the most valid reason there is. Night falls early but a full moon carries us home across the island, lighting the clouds in an eerie blue glow. I am too tired to wash the sea off my body and go to bed on white linens with black feet. Today was sunny and warm. Tomorrow will be sunny and warm. The pictures do nothing justice so I stop taking them. 

Lean back and let the soft sounds of silence rock me to sleep. 

CUR

The weather forecast repeats itself, the temperatures do not move in a year and our skins swell in the humid heat of the tiny island paradise near the equator. We buy our electricity from a tiny hut off the side of the road but live inside gates that presumably create more fear than they avoid harm. The little child looks so much like his father, their smiling faces greeting me outside the tiny airport like an impossible abstraction of a tiny earth. Here we are, and together, and isn't it the strangest thing, we said again and laughed, our feet in the salty waters of an unending sea and our faces turning brown in the afternoon sun. I dove out to the turquoise stretch where the sand was white, and its soft fine grains erased New York from the soles of my feet. 

There is no life lesson to be had here, no great revelation of what it is to be human. There is but the soft warmth of uncovered skin, peaceful smiles, a gentle breeze with the setting sun. 

It is but perfect. 

AUA

Ocean for miles, it never ends. I fall asleep and each time I wake up there is more ocean, stretching to infinity and glittering, dotted with clouds the kind that make you think of cotton candy, or bouncing sheep. One time there was a cargo ship in the middle of all the blue, tiny and appearing to stand still. What it must be like to travel the great oceans. 

And then, suddenly, a second's worth of turquoise shallow waters, a blur of palm trees, and before there is even a hint of land, we are on the ground. 

My cell phone doesn't work. Its No Service notice glares at me on the corner of the screen. I walk staring into it until the glass doors slide open: the tropics. It is the same story every time, that first burst of sweltering humidity on your skin, the wind warm, your body suddenly painfully pale to the eyes. Oh how I revel in its velvet air, the smell of tar and sweat and foreign foliage. My concerns dim, manana seems as good a time as any to solve whatever issue lies at hand. Soon my jacket will be stowed at the bottom of the bag, my warm New York winter clothes, laughably out of place. I pull out the sad remains of a sandwich made in the black of night on Morton street, smile at the inconceivable distance, sink in to the beat. 

Depart

For days,
and weeks,
every time an airplane crossed the Brooklyn corridor to LaGuardia
that longing to go,
pack your bags,
breathe airport nerves
and white, bright halls,
and move.
And now, the last night's scramble,
adding trinkets to overfull bags
unable to go to bed
on time
or at all
4,5 hours to wake up
but it doesn't matter
because soon you will be
in one of those planes
transit the sweetest feeling,
and soon, somewhere else
completely.

You relish
the jitters,
too.

Degrees

The smells return: of streets, of mulch, of garbage, of steel rails and sunshine. The tables come out, the chairs, the wine bottles and sunglasses. Birds go mad. We squeeze into the tiny restaurant on that street that we dreamed of all those years ago and New York is again that sweet, sparkling treasure I keep in my pocket for comfort. I come home tipsy, start packing bags and watch the minutes slip too quickly out of my grasp.

No matter.

The streets smell of summer. A hundred lifetimes lie waiting in the dawn.

Our

Oh but the words are no good, they really aren't, you look over tragic drivel and loose ends rolling your eyes. It doesn't bother you in the slighest. Year after year the same surprised repetitions, you call yourself a writer but lord if you ever found something new to say this time of year. About how it feels to suddenly open your eyes and see people in the streets (the young girl walking home in yesterday's painful heels with that short skirt barely covering her long, slender legs, and the man unlocking his bike who watches her all the way to Hudson Street), about the way spring explodes in your very gut and makes you dance around the apartment cleaning up and clearing out, about how you cannot keep from singing at the top of your lungs and laughing straight into the hesitantly budding gingko trees, and you cannot now remember a single day's sadness in winter. I devour the new books on my dresser, write little stories for the magazine about Paris (because I love Paris and because my poor cynic's heart never stood a chance against its spring), the scattered pieces of my novel falling apart in piles but I wouldn't have them any other way because such is the tale, but most of all I laugh and think that all of that will sort itself out, everything will sort itself out because do I not have everything I ever wanted after all and what word is there that could be better than laughter?

Spring is here.
Let us run madly into it
and never
never
look back.

Sate

There was the most delicious scent on the wind today. It had that inexplicable air of street, of garbage and cab tires and food truck and warm skin. We went to Central Park and took our jackets off by Bethesda fountain. Innumerable couples were taking their engagement pictures. Valentine's Day victims? One bride stood shivering in her sleeveless dress. We stared into the sun.

On my doorstep lay several packages, wrapped in brown cardboard: book deliveries. I unwrap them reverently and do not realize till later what joy they have put in my heart already. New books, unread treasures like the threshold of adventure just waiting to be unlocked and you don't know what's on the other side. I sit on a kitchen chair, reading, and forget to move. See twists and turns in my own story, as it twists and turns and gains momentum in my mind, running alongside these untouched pages, I smile.

It occurred to me today that I am happy. And not just the happy that puts a smile on your face. I simply thought of various lacks I should be experiencing and realized they are not bothering me. That I toiled and struggled to set my life up in a certain way, and now that it has gone through, I have exactly what I wanted. The strangeness of the moment was not lost on me. I smiled out loud in the Morton Street kitchen, continued to read. Life returns, in pieces.

the In-Between

(I know, there is much
static
and silence,
of late,
forgive me.

The last vestiges
of my poor energy
stores
are quickly dwindling
to nothing,
and I gasp at the shores
of approaching spring.
One more day
until daylight saving.

Soon
I may
be redeemed,
as well.)

This Book

It seems spring may never come.
Today was so cold.

I almost fell asleep
in the afternoon,
with the dog at my feet
and it's only Monday.

But then the sparks began
to stir
the words creating new songs
(and I can't even write songs)
and the way Ti Jean's words look
so different this year
but always magical
and reminders that not long ago
I burned it all to the ground
to get back here
(that being here
is the only good thing
I ever did right)


and then what use have I
for sleep?
The night grows late
my mind still a mad house
and hungry
if you were here
now
I would tell you.

It all.