This Breath

The bus weaves through Hell's Kitchen, crosses Broadway on the upper west and rolls slowly through Friday night in Harlem, all piles of people lingering in the streets: it is summer. The caravan crosses Malcolm X boulevard and your gaze follows its straight and narrow line through the park down to the softly lilting skyscrapers of midtown. Cross the bridge and look back: Manhattan overwhelms you with its beauty, with its untold treasures. You miss it already; an entire life across its avenues do not seem like enough time. 

The sturdy Greyhound ship continues slowly out of city limits. You embark on untold adventures, hundreds of miles of unknown highway stretch ahead of you, America unfolds at your feet. 

Your best days are perpetually yet to come. 

Cleavage, Cleavage, Cleavage

(Because when it's summer

in the city

and you're

long gone from

this city I

start to miss you,

sometimes)

The weather turns sweltering overnight. I run along the water and rivers of sweat make their way down the nape of my neck, the small of my back; I try to focus on how this will work out the kink in my joints, the ache in my chest, as my feet pound the blood across my temples. It works. Not for long. 

He calls from across the waters and you had forgotten how simple the lilt of his tongue, how welcoming the ease of conversation. You do not paint any futures across his forehead, but then, you never paint any futures at all. Your father calls and says Do you really believe you'll leave a year from now like you said, and the idea seems as ludicrous as any mad concoction your poor twisted heart could imagine. I didn't think so, he responds. 

In your heart (of hearts)

You have everything that matters. 

In your heart,

you are whole. 

Twine

Walk east on 12th street, pass a hundred different worlds across the avenues, with reiki energies sinking into the heels of your feet. It's too soon to go home, your breaths are still deep in your chest and you need the quiet streets to settle your beating heart.

Perhaps it is May's doing, this incessant smile on your lips, this spring in your step. Perhaps it's the way the East Village buzzes incessantly against your ear drum, and you want to see every last inch of it, touch every surface and hear every last mad sound of its streets. Your love for New York resurfaces, your love for the Word and you find yourself home on a Saturday night caressing old writings like former lovers you never entirely forgot after all. He calls from the chilly autumn evening while you lie sweating in Central Park, and you no longer remember what it is to miss someone, no longer remember what it feels like to miss a piece, because you miss nothing.

You will walk up and down these streets
(until they fill you)
and they will make you whole.

Holiday

You learn new things about the neighborhood: the East Village is as empty as the West come holiday weekends. You walk down Second Avenue, quieter than it ever has been since you arrived, and you remember again how you love the feeling of being alone in the city, having it all to yourself like a jealous girlfriend and savoring every moment in its gaze.

There's something to be said for being happy to your very core. You imagine it's unreasonable to expect it every damn day. 

But New York makes it pretty hard to believe it. 

To Serve

His girlfriend greets me with a familiar hug in the doorway; I cannot remember if we've met before. His eyes dart across the restaurant, all evening he is elsewhere but when we part ways he holds my hands a little longer than necessary. She reminds me of me, but better. It makes me happy.

There was a moment last night, when the drinks made my limbs so heavy and the pillow so soft, when the overwhelming vacuum at the core of my being reared its ugly monster of a head and with me nowhere to turn to look away. In one lapping wave, it knocked the breath right out of me and it took me so long to recover, as I tumbled down the rabbit hole into the cloying tar that resides there.

What is the point in letting myself roll through the sludge, letting my fingers get pruny with worthlessness and despair as the ghosts of days past devour the scraps of foundations I have built for myself? You look at me like the answer should be obvious, but I have no words left when I open my mouth.

It's just muted screams,
disguised as ignorant bliss.

I Was Prepared

A storm passes over the island. You run across Broadway to meet him in the rain, oh how Saturdays lie sad in New York City and you want to do away with all the cluttering people in your way. Your phone buzzes with unknown feelings and you cannot make sense of the turmoil in your chest, along your skin.

But he puts it so simply into words; you look him eagerly (earnestly) in the eyes and realize that from this giant mad man come the answers for which you've been desperately scrambling for weeks. Perhaps it's the warm thunder outside, perhaps it's the miles that lie between, no matter. The only thing you can do is try. Whatever will be, will be.

Your only job
is to be there, when it does.

Render

(If you wait long enough, 
stay up late enough, 
even the East Village grows quiet, 
with only the rushing sounds
of effortless traffic
along the avenues
to keep you company
-to occupy your mind-
and eventually you will hear
the voice inside your head
you've so successfully drowned out
It had not abandoned you
It was waiting patiently
until you 
were ready
to listen.)

That I'm Strong

Another earthquake hits the little country at the top of the world. His words are few and far between, but you forgot what they meant to say, anyway, and  you spend your evening reading history books about an Alphabet City that no longer exists. I ran along the East River last night, and watched Greenpoint in that magical twilight that only lingers in New York City, remembering a sweltering summer spent on the rooftop of the linen factory, watching the city spread out before us and only thinking When can I arrive at last? All these years later, and here I am, still, safely nestled in the avenues, and I never want to be anywhere else. (I told him I had to choose eventually, and all he said was Why? It seems silly now, but the alternative had never occurred to me.)

The air turns sweltering overnight, textiles stick to your skin and you wonder how you'll ever survive a summer without water. But in your inbox lie jewels of airfare, promises of fresh air and salty breezes against your cheeks. Perhaps you can have it all, and at the end of the day, a bed at the corner of 4th and 2nd, a quiet space that loves you more than you know how to love yourself, and perhaps you don't have to choose eventually.

Or maybe you chose long ago,
and you're living happily ever after
with the result.

(Forever More)

There is something in the dusty air, something about the incessant noise and strange eyes in the streets. It makes you want to write, again. It makes you want to feel, and bleed, and distill every last morsel into words until you pass out, spent and emptied, atop the mattress in the corner of your room. It makes you feel again like if you could spend your days in literate lust, you would want for nothing, ask for nothing, you would be whole and invincible.

It occurs to you again, 

that such a possibility

is worth every sacrifice you've ever made
in its name. 

Any Alibis

It smells like rain; the tiniest drops begin to hit you when you reach the river, and it could just be mist from the sea. You cross at least five worlds on your way across the avenues. You could just as well have moved across the globe as twelve blocks east, but you didn't, and your love for the city grows a thousand times in your heart (repeatedly, incessantly, perpetually) at the insight. Across the water, Brooklyn lies grey and surprisingly industrial, the pasta factory a concrete behemoth reminder of times past.

It occurs to you that this place is becoming a large collection of moments past. You don't understand how you could ever be anywhere else, but it still seems impossible to consider it a possibility to not be. 

You wonder what would happen

If you let your heart take the wheel

For a while. 

Sharpen Your Knives

I cannot read your words anymore, she says in the heavy silence between sips of a drink, it doesn't seem right anymore. You neglect his novel ambitions, forget to submit your own in time. Words slip through your fingers. Listen to what I say, pay no attention to what I do, you hear yourself whisper, but as the days go, you find it difficult to trust either. It is all fun and games until they look at you with that sentiment in their eyes and you bring out the daggers from the inseam of your boots.

The lilacs are in bloom along Union Square this week. You trace fourth avenue and cross the park at the south end, narrowly avoiding the pile of bikes on the steps and staring at the flowers like they will give you new life. (Because they do.) How quickly life takes on a new shape entirely, and you forget it was ever any other way. The street outside your window beats its scrappy, messy noise into your ear drums.

It sounds like music; you sleep like a child.

Apt 5

You cross Bleecker the same way as always, know where the delivery bicycles will suddenly appear, can count the seconds it takes to cross Seventh Ave before the light turns, but when you turn the corner at Morton Street, the feeling in your blood vessels is different. You could walk that last block blind folded, but this is not your home. There are no keys in your pocket; you ring the buzzer and wait to be let in. The dog is confused, but he melts in your palm when you ask him.

It's strange to leave, at the end of the night. Walk east along Third Street, cross Broadway under a thick, full moon. But you unlock the gate at your new stoop, the steep one, squeezed in between the seafood restaurant and the deli on the corner, and something about it feels right. The West Village melts away as the maddening noise of Second Avenue at midnight peaks. You go to bed in a room you do not know.

But it knows you, already.

to Church

The lilacs on 3rd street are in full bloom, and it's barely May. I walked past the Key Foods in alphabet city this morning, remembering a sweltering August day many, many years ago, with our wide eyes and disbelieving anyone could live on this street, in this place, we asked them a hundred questions even though we were only there to pick up a craigslist bid. Somehow, magically, impossibly, it is the street where I live. I walked out to the river, and the whole world seemed so terribly full of promise, of mad adventure and new beginnings.

It occurs to me there is nowhere else I would rather be. There never was. I fear there never will be.

If you've found your way home,
why would you ever want to leave it?

Sing Me Anything

(It isn't much, yet,

Your limbs are too tired 

To speak or tell you their dreams

From

Last night,

But at the very edge

Of your lips

There's an ever-so slight

Smile,

And you can feel it 

Grow.)

I Need a Raincoat

Saturday morning at the Fulton mall, sun beaming down as you wait impatiently for the bus. His playlist makes you all sorts of maudlin, and it makes the cherry blossoms unpleasantly out of place.

You wake alone in your impossibly large room on East 4th, buy your coffee alone and ride the bus without saying a word. It runs past the house on Dean Street where you used to spend your days, where you used to live someone else's life. In your old home on Morton Street, an Italian mother dotes on a new young tenant. 

Perhaps the shaky legs of a person without a hand to hold should make you feel sad. 

But hell if it don't make me feel free.  

Homeward Bound

Strange voices mingled outside my door, too early in the morning for guests but they walked confidently into the apartment and aaahed in nostalgia. This was the stoop where we had our first kiss, she says, and now we are celebrating out 40-year anniversary. She had lived here in the 60s, and how different the neighborhood then.

I walked home slowly through the west village today, spring in its most overwhelmingly beautiful essence. The streets buzz with people, but they are clean, coordinated. You drag your suitcase across the Bowery and feel calmed by its madness, at ease in the dirt it still retains. The Empire State Building gleams in the distance.

Six years ago you turned the corner on Morton street for the first time and knew, instantly, you were home. The cab ride east is ten dollars, with tip, and it feels like a whole new world. You put the last of your things in a bag (there's too many things, always too many things and you weigh a hundred pounds more just by owning them), rearrange the furniture until it looks like you were never there at all. Sleep one last, sound sleep in the little apartment with the teapots.

Tomorrow, adventure begins anew.