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.