C11

I am at an airport again. How many hours have I spent in these sterile halls, staring out of windows, going through the motions of departure and arrival. There was a time, before the attacks on the towers, when your loved ones could come all the way to the mouth of the airplane to greet you. How many tears have been cried, how many laughs and desperate embraces at these gates. When I was eleven, and for the first time flying trans-Atlantic without my parents, the plane had an engine malfunction and we sat on the freezing tarmac of a Canadian military base for twelve hours. They showed us all the entertainment they could: two movies, instead of the usual one. They flew us down to New York for a new plane, it was my first time in the city and we could see the Statue of Liberty from the hotel window. 

From LaGuardia you can see most of the skyline when you wait for your plane. There's an April sun out, warming the skin as you walk and I wonder why I'm leaving. The winter of 2006 was the same way, people sun-tanning in New York while the rest of the country froze. He tells me he sleeps with the windows open and it's still too warm. 

When you sit at a gate

You want for nothing. 

Rememberance

(If you ever forget,
what it is you are meant to be doing,
it is this:
spend your days, in silent solitude,
spend your nights, in raging song
across typewriter keys ,
in unraveling stories
against sleepless hours,
with no care
for anything
that lies beyond
for anything
that is
not
the word,
spend your life
writing,

and all
will
be well.)

Your Name in the Sky

Winter is warm, impossibly mild. I sit in the kitchen with the window wide open, smoking slow drags into the quiet night. The neighbors across the courtyard have had a dinner party; they clear empty bottles from the terrace while the lanterns flicker and die. The Big Day is still ahead of them.

I spoke with the ghosts of Brooklyn past today, all snug and tipsy in a faraway land. I tell them nothing lasts forever, but he reminds me that I already said that once and it turned out to be wrong. Did I not pack my bags? Did I not return to the city that is my home to find that I sleep better at night, that I smile better in my heart? So lightly they tread their news grounds, unwilling to believe their circumstance. It may change yet. I still count my blessings louder when we're through.

You asked me if I'd thought about it, and I lied when I said I hadn't. It's all I can do not to hold my breath until passing out; it's all I can do to remember putting one foot in front of the other in the street. I suppose I fear admitting it, and finding I could just as well stay writhing on the ground.

A new year lies waiting.
Be the change you wish in others.
You know not yet where your steps may lead.

A Fair Game

It's a trick of the lights, waiting for the train to arrive in the tunnel, imagining a brighter light there in the depth but deceived. Perpetually tempted to step into the dark and see what lies beyond. 

I started a new story yesterday, the dusty scent of the typewriter keys offering inspiration long lost and you revel in the delicious catharsis of beating out stories into the night. He calls from France, you remember a panicked run through the streets of Lyon and how different the world looked in youth. How you thought the early years were the summit, when truly you've never been more lost. 

His eyes tug and pull at your heart strings, and you wish you might abandon your half written stories for other futures completely. 

But I walked along Lexington avenue tonight, all frosted skies and twinkling skyscraped lights, and I thought there is no place, there is no person, I could ever love as much as I love walking these streets. 

It's a terrible hand, but I'll play. I may be bluffing, but I'll smile till the chips run out. 

Yours To Keep

(Honey, it's harder now that it's over)

Another hangover rattles in your evaporating skin: every move is a challenge to equilibrium, and you spend hours counting seconds until it passes. The weekend is over in the blink of an eye and you think of those words she wrote, that a day is long but a year is short. Your life is almost over, but those damn seconds took forever, until you could stand up without puking. Walk past the Rockefeller Christmas tree with brunch drinks in your veins and smile at Midtown in winter sun--it's so god damned pretty, when it tries.

I cleaned the desk today, with its piles and piles of typewritten pages, an extra stack beneath the books, too. There was a manifesto in its folds, full of typos and ink smudges, of course, but with words so overwhelming I forgot I had remembered to feel them once.

Winter is coming, it is dark and long and terrifying, and life is moving so quickly it will be over soon and I haven't even become anything yet. But I walk these streets in great long strides, with my feet firmly planted on the island, back straight and eyes clear, and nothing has ever made me feel more real than this.

I thought you should know that.

All is not lost,
that does not know its way
(so long as it is moving,
at all)

IV

(I thought of you today, in that way which I rarely allow myself. It ate at my gut and left my knees weak. We stood shivering in Bryant Park this morning and I thought New York is home even in rainy fog, but I haven't the answer to anything else.

I was hoping you might. But I fear I am mistaken.)