Re:Treat

She asks about New York, and you give standard responses as you would to anyone. You have forgotten the city completely -- one endless swim in the ocean washed it right out of you. But it sinks in as you stare at the sky, the sense of the scrambling city bumbling about your insides. You miss it terribly and wonder how you'd ever leave it again. 

Troubles rage against the insides of your eyelids, no 4-hour flight can ever save you from that. But a warm Caribbean breeze strokes the back of your neck, and while New York is miles and miles away, you know it is coming, you know it will return. May lies in wait, adventure in the margins. All you have to do is say yes. 

Like Bach

Turquoise waves over soft white sand. Brown skin and smiling faces. You do not know the language, but you know arrival: it makes you whole every time. They smile such kind smiles and you think how your country beats their kindness out of them, a little each day. Stand at the edge of the ocean with your pale winter skin, and feel again how nothing feels more right than your toes in the sea. Go somewhere new every year. And you did. Metaphorically too. 

Decide to beat the kindness back into your senses. Look upon yourself with new perspective. 

My lips taste of salt, and of sunshine. 

Gone Too Long

A thunderstorm rages across the sky, the first of the season and the lightning bounces off the west village brownstones. You set an alarm clock so early sleep seems nearly pointless. I heard a neighbor singing sweet soul the other day, when all our windows were open and the magnolia blossoms were floating through the air in the courtyard. Everything falls apart around you. She will not look you in the eye. You cannot decide how to feel. The rain pelts on your window pane in a fury, tomorrow you will be thousands of miles away.

If you wanted symbolism,
here it is in droves.

Esc

So many false starts, so many sunlit moments when you've thought This is it, and you've found yourself feeling alive for seemingly the first time in a lifetime. You've smiled with conviction and crossed the island in great big strides that have already forgotten what it is to be cold, and sad, and tired.

But then, when the day actually arrives, when Spring beats its way into the very core of your being, when it tears down every icy brick around your heart and releases that manic laugh from your lungs that surprises you into tears, you realize that what has come before was only a minor reprieve from the depths. Now, you are alive. Now, you live.

I went to 54th street yesterday, to the 35th floor of a glass building with indifferent doormen, and from one corner of the office suite you could see the Queensborough Bridge in the distance. The assistant brought me a glass of water; she was very sweet, unassuming. We signed the papers and smiled that way people do who do not know each other at all, yet have no secrets. There's something about May first that makes me unable to stay on the ground, every year I come untethered and need desperately to run into unknown adventures, and this year is no exception. As my tornado of a soul ransacked the dusty apartment on Morton Street today, high on the drug of separation with a browser full of airline tabs, I realized again the joy in surviving another winter, remembered what it is that makes humans toil and endure every harsh unbearable heartache and heavy sleep.

Now, I am alive.

Now, hot damn, I will live.

Windows

Jag skriver inga dikter till dig
Så gör man inte nu

Oh how spring makes the world look different. You feel the blood course quickly through your veins, and your cheeks flush with stolen moments in Union Square. Every day is a wild storm of giddy highs and terror clutching at your throat. You wake in the night with a toothache, but there is at least one moment every day when you are struck by how inexplicably happy you are that this is your life, and it makes every winter's day worth its despair. The gingko on Seventh Avenue is ready to burst, you already miss seeing it every day. Remind yourself that change is good, that the world is new and that you are young, yet. She says Think of the things you like and try to find them again, but you want to think of everything you've missed, instead, dive in head first and swim around in novelty until your fingers get pruny. May always made your skin burn with madness and that vagabond fever.

You decide to put your prescriptions away, let the disease rage through you.

Pray it reminds you what it is to stay alive.

Fireside

Perhaps it's distance - or proximity - perhaps it is the circumstances that trick you into this convoluted maze. You lose your breath and forget what came before. I still can't listen to your music, it collects in droves and when I get too close, it is like nothing has changed.

I walked down second avenue today, past the buildings that burned down on St Marks and the streets were so much noisier than their neighbors to the west. I thought am I mad to do this? but in my heart of hearts, I leapt a hundred leaps for the change, for the way May will begin with new horizons and other stories in the breeze. These streets show me the way, even when I do not deserve it. My tooth aches again, but I am not afraid.

Tomorrow the magnolias will bloom. Tomorrow, you are invincible again.

The Way You Are

Spring arrives to the island, and it overwhelms and impresses you as much this year as any before. You sit on the roof, drinking wine and staring out over the sprinkled West Village buildings, wondering if the big decisions you're making are the right ones. I'll miss this neighborhood so much, you say, but you do not yet entirely believe you'll ever leave it. Walk carefully through a sunny apartment on numbered streets and try to picture your books stacked in the first room on the right, see if you recognize your face in the mirror. 

My sister comes to town, reminds me of all the wrongs I insist on perpetuating, of the havoc I seem so intent to wreak. I only wanted rights, you know, but they evade me at every step. 

It occurs to me that the only thing I ever got right was this City. As long as you stay in its embrace, how could you ever go wrong?

Post Title

I thought of you today. She asked me about the shitty things that happen in life and all I could picture was you crouched in that window of a seven-story building, all I could feel in my chest was the cool April air against your cheeks and how quickly a body can fall. I missed your day this year; I thought perhaps enough time had passed and erased your story from my lungs, but it never will. You fade, a little, and perhaps the circumstances get a little more condensed, but you are always here. You always remind me to keep going.

I am still afraid of heights. But I am hellbent on learning how to fly.

Anyone Would Be

I have simply wanted an object to crave.

The dog wakes me early, we venture out to the river while the Village still lies sleeping. There's a cool breeze, but the sun was up way before us, the pavement is warm. It must officially be spring, we ran through Central Park in a giggle yesterday and every patch of earth was filled to the brim with flowers. The new year is brutal in its beauty, it forces itself into your every broken crevice and you think, for a moment, you are invincible. But your roommate goes to Connecticut, and in the silence she leaves behind, your every bandage unravels, your bones break and your innards spill across the unwashed floors. The news feed claims Jesus died for my sins, but I think if he knew me, he'd let the dead dog lie. 

There's a reason this city is home, you know. There's a reason I sleep soundly when the currents of a metropolis tumble every face into an unknown and keep no relationships moored around my belly. When subway trains arrive at the platform, I like to stand really close to the edge, close my eyes, and let myself get knocked back by the rushing air at their sides. But the thought of you holding my hand makes it feel like that air is getting sucked right back out of my lungs again, and the whole beautiful city gets taken from me in one fell swoop. 

Don't be so hard on yourself. It's not easy to contend with a magical city. 

It's not easy to hold on to someone who is so hellbent on falling apart. 

Let's Waste Time

I think I want you to be darker and twistier than you actually are, she says.

And the vicious flesh wounds that have ripped through your every muscle, have bled into your guts and wreaked havoc with your frailly beating heart, they seem mostly closed with those Bandaids you plastered across your skin. You walk through your days with a quiet smile and a confident direction.

But wounds heal into scars, into thick, pink bulges that do not give when you move through them. They make your steps less fluid, your laughter stick in your throat. They follow you where you go, always irritating your flustered skin, always reminding you how they tried to kill you.

So no, I am not as dark and twisty as you expected.

And it takes all I have, to keep it that way.