Hosianna

Illness rages through me, my body on fire and my eyes only able to see a foot ahead. Words lie silent, what could they have to say? A ridiculous year lies behind you, you will remember always the death toll, literal and otherwise, but it's nearing its end. I read a book about New York on the plane and nearly cried.

Some things have not died. They beat in your heart strong as ever. You remember that, too.

Christmas Day

You spend a few days in twisted agony, in swirling down an inevitable rabbit hole and gasping for air at every turn. The days are warm and the nights freeze you right to the bone, it's hard to remember which way is up. Christmas Day arrives and Second Avenue is deserted in the early morning. I turn on the Christmas tree lights and make a cup of coffee before remembering my own name but it returns eventually.

Late in the afternoon, much later than planned but better than never, I finally make my way outside to find New York alive, well, and bustling despite itself. At the summit of Williamsburg bridge, the sun begins to set over the Statue of Liberty, hoards of people gather, stopping their runs or hopping off their fixie bikes to capture it on their respective apps, but I can barely hear them.

Because when I despair, does the city not come straight to my aid? When I falter, does it not pick me up in the most beautiful ways? A deep orange lays on the Empire State Building, the Chrysler dazzles on fire. Puzzle pieces of Brooklyn skylines stack themselves around the horizon. I forget all things, so easily I stumble, but there is one conviction in which I never waver. New York City is home in a way that my soul never was on its own, it sates me and fills me and lets me love when I don't think I know what love is. I am not right, without it, but in its arms I want for nothing.

The sun sets eventually, the balmy afternoon giving way to winter winds, and the crowds disperse. I pick myself back up, breathing now in a way I haven't for weeks, months maybe. Who needs poetry when there is this place?

Who needs anything else, at all?

17th and 5th

I crossed 5th avenue today just before sunset, Friday afternoon busy with holiday shoppers and angry taxi cabs as per usual, but halfway across the avenue I looked south to Greenwich village and a freedom tower spire at the end of the island, and the afternoon sun hit the high buildings with such a fire, and carved their shapes into such sharp contours, and I looked north to see a massive Empire State Building firm and steady on its block, and for a split second I lost my breath and remembered that I have never seen a more beautiful sight.

A piece of me perpetually lives on that crosswalk. The rest of me lives on blissfully, merely knowing it exists.

For Now

A couple breaks up next to our table at breakfast. Sunny, mild Sunday morning in the East Village and she cries into the remains of her kale salad. His plate is clean, his face looks bothered that this isn't over yet. They split the check; I want to tell her to leave and stick him with the bill, but she is feigning civility. The space is small; everyone knows what is going on. It's not even noon.

I went for a long run, later, as dusk was settling in and Brooklyn was going dark across the water. I thought how this city is mine, how it continues to live and breathe in me day after day and what a blessing that is. What a terrible abyss if it no longer should be. My steps were lighter at the reminder.

We are not out of the woods.
But we are in them, together.

Spiral

You tell him you are climbing out of the muck but it isn't true
You are being dragged into the quicksand
suffocated by its cloying messes
tumbling helplessly down a rabbit hole of your own delusions
You know there is daylight
somewhere
But you don't know
anymore
how long it'll be till you see it.

Home

The weather turns, cold winds blow from the north and change is on the rapidly approaching horizon. We've spent some time, quite some time now, in blissful nostalgia, old pieces in their right places, and how easy it's been to pretend they weren't ever broken, how sweet. But goodbyes always come in the end, and you stand on a frozen Brooklyn street corner figuring out how best to say them. The answer, it turns out, is as though they are just another piece.

Because after all, have you not also left, have you not been on the receiving end of encouragement and through inescapable sadness known somehow that goodbyes are no more than see you soons? This jagged edge, this piece that doesn't seem you had planned will also fit, eventually.

I rode the J train back over the bridge, back to Empire State Buildings and Chrysler spires, back to a warm, dirty jumbled East Village home, back to the piece that I squeezed gratefully into its crooked slot and made fit again. I thought I have never seen a more beautiful sight, but I think that every time. I have never loved you more than I do now.

I mean it every time.

Tumble

It occurs to me
That even after years of calm
of keeping my head above the surface

I am only ever treading water.

And the second I stop
I drown.

Near Moon

Blue light streaming in from skylight windows. How quiet the world outside its center. We kicked leaves today like children, but went to bed like adults with the world on our shoulders. How far the sheets can stretch at opposite ends of a full size mattress. An omnipotent ruler carries us in his careless hands; none are left unspoiled.

Those who think they are will suffer a harsh blow under his thumb.

Shelter

A world storms, great clouds roll in over a forecast that had predicted sunshine. We walk the streets in a daze, how nothing seems real when the rug is swept from under you and the chasm opens. I left my job one day and I'm not coming back. Perhaps this wasn't the time to believe in a brighter future.

We took a bus to the eastern end of the long island, caught a ferry, made our way through golden foliage and down a hidden path, found a quiet paradise where nothing seemed to exist but the now. How far away the world sometimes. I slept a hundred hours in silent blackness and let the answers come to me in time.

When all the storms have raged, we will still be here. When the fires have burned, when the wars have been fought, when the angry men have yelled and lost their voices, something greater will emerge from the rubble. We will find a way, because we have to. I will carry this heavy heart until it can find reason to fly.

Trickle Down

Crawl out from the rubble
Day after the great fall
Rub your eyes
Stare at the rain

Where could we possibly go
from here?

Archives

It is not you; it is
me.

Too many years of falling leaves and approaching fall have rendered me a cripple; I can no longer wait for answers, for the feelings of others to appease me or to ease my quivering uncertainties. My skin vibrates, there is an ache in my gut caused by your silence, your absence, that I can tolerate no longer. A better woman would ride out the storm, would stand her ground and calmly await your arrival at her port, but I cannot. My soul aches with your imagined departure from my bed, and to save the few, fragile shards that remain of my dignity, I will close the door now, lock it firmly and convince myself I am better off imprisoned within my own solitary walls than standing outside a house on fire.

The homeless have such a cold time of it in winter.

Foreign

They return slowly, the words. They seep into your stream of consciousness nearly undetected at first, just whispers of something familiar and an uneasy stirring like you forgot the gas on. They build in your spine until they expand in your lungs, there's a flicker behind your eyelids as the lights come back on, everything smells of dust but more like a used books shop than something died. A typewriter roars to life. A story unfolds.

Wretched lifelines stretch across your skin, gnarl your muscles into convoluted confusions, but no matter. You will live this life as it was given to you, as best you can, you will race across the world and into countless brick walls, because at the end of the day, when you have sweated and cried and bled, sometimes there will be a word, or two, or a string of sentences that make sense, and all your wear will wash away and you will be born anew.

You have gone to the ends of the earth
But you will come home some time.

Go

He says you sound blue, and I can't see the sad shapes in the ink trail behind me. Do I not feel now more alive than in ages? Does it not seem the darkness of fall brings with it this time a tingle, like the excitement of new love? A room spreads out around me, paper piles and clothes strewn around like they're free. A voice speaks through me like an old neglected friend, familiar like we were never not one. Soon, soon, everything will happen and the world is brand new. I have been lost, I'll be the first to admit, these words are merely placeholders, they mean nothing.

1. Do things that scare you.

Living might be the first.

Starts

The aftermath of a storm comes in waves. A surge of the tide pummels the blocks you've set up, drowns the slight calm where you could breathe. Words were said that cannot be taken back, you've placed this elephant out in the open and let it speak, and now you have to follow up and walk it through the town. It terrifies you. For so long you were trying only to make it to this moment; once it's passed, this is the time to actually swim.

Barricade yourself under a tin roof while the rain pounds at your edges. When the clouds let up, stroll the streets of your city, this old love of yours, it looks brand new in twilight, it looks brand new under the soles of your freed feet, it looks like it did when you first met and fell in love and everything was possible because it still does and it still is.

You got lost for a minute. It doesn't matter.

You are back.

Storm

It is not long
now,
not far
Walk towards it
until it is
inevitable

Then let it happen.

Mockingbird

He sends you a story, not long, not perfect, but you think, there is work here, there is labor and ambition and he's gotten somewhere. You read it, leave red notes in the margins, admire his efforts too much to remember your envy. Count down days till unknown landslides, you are sure they will place you somewhere better, it's only the tumble that's scary. Drink budweisers in front of the future of America yelling across the tv screen; my generation must have something to say, there is a war going on in our midst we will not be left out. We will not go unscathed. 

When you look back at your days, 

What will you wish you had done?

Go do it. 

Canary

The autumnal equinox arrives, all pumpkin spice promise and darkened evenings but the sunshine lingers and bakes the park mid-day. One roommate gets engaged, and the ring takes up more space in the apartment than could possibly be carried on a light limb. They commit to a life time and I can't even settle on a regular coffee order.

Brace yourself.

Winter is coming.

You Said

It rained today, in the way it does not in summer but in fall. The humidity made my skin soft, but cloying. There's no escape from weather like that. I sat in a corner, let the guitar build calluses of my hands, as it washed over me in swells.

I said I wouldn't be one of those people who speaks of dreams and never lives them, how does age creep up so slowly and strangle you with complacency. There's a hunger in me that will not be sated by quick carbohydrates, by 9-5 and steady paychecks. Fires die down without oxygen, you can suffocate it if it scares you and reduce it to stardust but it turns out that the raging storms are not what should scare you at all. The slow death underneath that lid, the quiet darkness that eviscerates you when you've let your guard down, that's what should keep you up at night.

And maybe the worst part is that it doesn't.

Walk/Run

Such sweltering heat, such neverending fog to wade through. Pity men their suit jackets. Clear your phone of social media and end up with hours of solitaire, what did you accomplish? 

A bomb explodes in Chelsea and everyone scrambles for a connection. It's been so long since the Ground was a pile of rubble but longer still for those who were children when it happened. I saw it in a museum but the pictures weren't black and white. 

I have long conversations with you when I run. You don't know it. Your answers are eloquent, sometimes you say what I wish you did and others what I wish you wouldn't. You don't know it. Entire lifetimes play out between Williamsburg Bridge and Battery Park, past the kids playing quidditch, the Chinese women with their synchronized dancing and the tourists who don't know how to walk where I don't trample them. You follow me, whisper in my ears. Sometimes I run faster to get away from your words, but I never seem to run fast enough. 

Everywhere I turn, I want to tell you about it. 

Mississippi

When did life become so unbearably sad? When did it turn into an ever-louder question of whether to cut your losses now and live in bland complacency or cling on to some grandiose idea of complete fulfillment while watching the chasm between dream and reality widen into an impossible canyon? Is this what life is? Did everyone answer this question already and reveal none of the secret? 

You lie awake at night asking

To what end. 

August 31, 2006

Today

Ten years ago

I dragged a heavy suitcase

onto the island of 

Manhattan, 

all bright lights

sparkling

and absolutely overwhelming

on a Thursday night

Ten years ago

Today

New York became Home

it coursed through my blood

And every day

every night

since then

It has done so, relentlessly

incessantly

beautifully

New York, 

Honey, 

Oh I love you so. 

Ps. This happened. 

(Start) Overs

There was a great storm in the sky as we passed over Missouri. A bolt of lightning every second lit up the giant mass of clouds to the north, like a grand spectacle that only we could see, 30,000 miles above the ground and hanging impossibly. I sat completely still as we passed it, unable to look away. There is something to be said for feeling immensely small once in a while. It put me at ease. 

All day smiling in anticipation, patiently handling every obstacle in a carefree breeze, although to be honest perhaps it was more careless. No matter. 

Sometimes the strikethroughs and rewrites and erases leave too much mess behind, it's impossible to write over again. I go to a land of mountains beyond  mountains, dark night skies and quiet sleeps, of dry air and a home that lives in you perpetually. I go not to begin the page anew. 

I go to start a new sheet entirely. 

Journal Notes

7-10-2016

Reading Goodbye to all That, and reminded again how I love New York beyond reason, how it is the place that makes me feel whole, and makes me feel like I am me. 
I'll figure the rest out. 
I will quit my job, and travel for a bit. I will return. I will find a dark, uncool bar in Alphabet City where no one goes and I will go there, drink beer, and remember who I am. 

Leaving New York is the hardest thing I've ever done. 
So Staying should be easy.

Ready to Go

Another heat wave rolls across the coastline, drowns the city in impossible humidity, turns every step into a treacle. I trek through the boroughs but none offer reprieve -- every subway platform is a battle against time, against your lungs giving out, against retaining the last scraps of dry fabric against your pulsating skin. Leave the two foot radius of each room's air conditioning unit and instantly be transported to a tropical wonderland. 

I walked down 108th tonight and the air smelled of warm, wet grass. It smelled of summer vacation and back to school supplies, those last free August nights sleeping on your neighbor's trampoline and looking at the stars. It's all you can think of these days, some nostalgic freedom and senses overwhelmed with life.

There is never time to be overwhelmed anymore. To be alone, lonely, scared, to long for something until it ached in your chest, to lie sleepless in anticipation. I wrap myself in security blankets and wandering daydreams about things that really shouldn't be at all. It passes the time, sure. 

But is passing time what you meant to do with your life?

Helter Skelter

I don't feel good 

don't bother me.

Into the Wild

The heat wave comes and builds, it undulates across the island and mauls the senses. We escape for a brief moment's respite, dive in cool waters off strangers' docks, eat hamburgers on suburbian patios, nothing you wish was yours when the weekend passes. A bride and groom arrive on the island, the entire wedding melts under the Central Park sun but damn if it isn't the most beautiful place on earth. A feeling gnaws at you all week, in every silent space it appears, causes you to shift uneasily before moving on into the next distraction. I sat in a crowded theater tonight and watched a mess of hair sing  more feeling than I have allowed myself to know in ages.

there has to be something more
to life
than this

Hunger

It occurred to me 
this morning
as I was drying my hair
that you are gone.

The pummeling humidity eases for a minute; the air becomes clear and the sky blue, New York glitters around the edge of your eyes and you forgive it every transgression. The book on your nightstand waxes on about tiring of the city, of finding wide open spaces beyond and never looking back. How smug people can be who wash the city out of their system, who step out of the ashes and carry on like their is no limp in their step. You don't know if you despise or envy them.

I moved the writing desk yesterday. I write now, staring into the wall, words of years past falling over   me as I try force new ones into the world. Some days are light, some days are a little bit harder. But you are still in the fire.

You are not stepping out anytime soon.

Summer in the City

All my friends say
that of course it's
going to get better
(better)
(better)

The heat breaks. Finally, for a minute, there is reprieve. The pain in my arm subsides, slightly, days pass and you breathe, it's like a haze is lifted from your eyes. We went to the beach and I stared at the horizon until I forgot my name, let the salt water wash over my teeth until they went numb, we rode home on the A train for an hour and I was tired in that delicious way that only the sea can make a person.

I walked down the Bowery today, little drops of rain falling hesitantly into the steaming air and the early evening sunlight waded across the brown brick buildings and water towers of what used to be a wasteland. The street smelled of warm city, dirty, crowded, impossibly alive and unequivocally New York; my heart swelled a hundred times and I smiled at strangers, I couldn't stop. As I crossed Houston, he sent a picture of late night twilight, open space and melancholic nature, and I recognized the feeling instantly.

It seems a lifetime ago, now, I stood in an apartment unpacking bowls and books I didn't want to unearth, knowing that each piece placed moored me further to a place I didn't want to be, a place that wasn't New York. Leaving the city tore a gash in my insides I didn't know if I could ever heal, I almost forget now what it was like. The mere shadow of the memory scares me out of ever wanting to leave it again. I know there are beautiful things elsewhere, I know I have been happy, I know there is a life for people out there.

But when that golden light hits the avenues, when I see endless miles of the city stacked up like Legos around me and the sounds of its steady pulse beat through me like nothing has ever been broken and I will never be lost, the scar in my gut smooths out, the horizon grows fuzzy and uninteresting. It's not that I'm scared of leaving.

It's that the only thing I ever wanted to do was stay.

Diverted

Return to the city and find it has turned into a steaming bath. People move slowly, the air not at all, and you gasp for breath as beads of sweat make their way down the small of your back. He sends pictures of rain; you know the way the air feels there in July rain, but it's too far to even long for. I walked through a quiet dark street in Queens and found it lit intermittently by lightning bugs, a steady, pulsating yellow lights alongside my browning knees. It's a gentle reminder of the sweetness of nature, how it will outlast us all. A comforting thought. 

My body continues to turn itself inside out in pains, I take pills, shake it off, try not to listen. Someone broke into our apartment last week and didn't steal a thing; I don't know if I should be grateful. This heat twists everything and it's hard to see clearly. Perhaps I wish you were here, but it might be a trick of the lights. I walked past the remains of a bunk bed on avenue C last night; the same bright red beams as of our little pocket on Curry Hill all those years ago. I slept like a dream in that bed -- all of New York was unknown and unclaimed, I loved it more than I could fear it, and it carried me across a thousand unknowns, did it not? Here it lay like the collapsed skeleton of a long extinct creature, like a relic. 

Perhaps that might be what I am, too, falling apart at the seams and too tired to be afraid of anything.

It doesn't feel any different than being alive. 

If You Call

The days pass in quiet ease. Slow morning coffee on the porch, swim, sun, rinse, repeat. We walked out to the Main Street to watch fireworks from across the hill; people sat in rows along the sidewalks, no one spoke. 

How easy to try to rush the answer. To stress about finding it in such short time of reprieve. Relax now! You yell at your insides, and they laugh, mocking, in return. 

But then you wake one morning, rushing out the door to make the most of the remaining half day, before traffic congests and your alarm clock begins its count down to sweaty, aching rat race days, and as you lie on the dock, letting the warm wood seep into your pores, let the blue waters dance along your spine, listening to the constant rhythm of silence, there you see them. Distant, still, soft around the edges like mornings before putting on your glasses, but definitely, irrevocably, there. You swim a few more strokes in cool, gentle waves. Know everything will be alright. 

Copy Paste

Rimbaud by the lake and nothing seems real. Sunshine, swimming, your skin turns pink in patches but not the swath of brown across your shoulders, you mourn. My body begins to give up, yells in pain and I know the solution but it's the same that would appease my mind as well, we are simple creatures and carry the answers within. God does not know better. Nor aspirin.

She writes from the homeland to say there must be an alternative. We must be able to grow old without falling in line, without being funneled into babies and 9-5s or pathetically clinging to 20-somethings and their ignorant bliss. She says I'm not looking to be anyone's role model, but I believe she may well come to be mine. He sends pictures from a cab, a last wave before they disappear on the horizon, and you fear there's meaning in that but you're not ready to find out what it may be.

The sun set last night in quiet majesty across an endless valley. We sat on the back porch watching it go, the air more quiet than you've known in ages. I feel like an answer may whisper itself through the breeze. I just have to sit here long enough to let myself hear it.

Som Vi Sa

Sticky subway pillars, it's a hundred degrees in the underground and ages until the next local train maybe I should have taken a cab after all but Park Avenue is so quiet this time of night and it's like a small gift from the city to have it all to yourself. I drank too much, I can't feel my skin anymore but my tooth hurts. It moves like a weather vane when my heart hasn't the strength to gauge the storms ahead. We spoke of you but nothing means anything anymore, distance makes the heart tired and quiet in the long run as you know. Upper east side building scattered around us in midsummer twilight, I take deep breaths in air you could cut with a knife. This is life. Tomorrow races at me, the train bumbles so slowly through the tunnels. 

I saw scars on her arms this morning. This is life. We get by any way we can. The train makes only express stops to the edge of the island. You think perhaps there's another way you should wander. 

But it's too late now to know. 

Fire

The slope is slippery, you know this, the swirling vortex will take you with it and you have to fight it so not to drown. You feign resistance but slice the knife deeper and deeper into your skin. Relax into the warm thick stream of blood, the momentary relief it offers. Only when it sticks to your skin, plasters against your cheek do you realize it is but quicksand and you only fall further in by indulging it. The weather turns sweltering. 

You know it will pass, a hundred times you repeat it to yourself, it will pass. 

The only question is, who will you be when it does? 

Strawberry Moon

The fall continues across the summer solstice. I tumble aimlessly, hitting rocks and dirt on my way down but unable to grasp at roots or ledges as I go. It's the longest day of the year and all I can think is how tomorrow is darker, and the day after darker still. The air has gotten so warm, suddenly, I sleep naked and gasp for air, perhaps it's just a trick of the lights.

You know the sorrow will pass. You know you will wake up one morning and it'll seem all but a bad dream, look over your shoulder and see receding mist behind you nothing is as scary in the daytime.

It is only life. What harm can it do for it to shake a little.

50p

I dreamed of four-leaf clovers. They grew large and seemed so pervasive as to lose their magic, I wonder what that meant. Afforded a moment's reprieve, I tumble instantly down the rabbit hole of dark ideas. Depression washes over me like a tidal wave, I am tossed and drowned, pummeled against rocks and disoriented. Every time the same attempts at gasping for air and simultaneous resignation at the lack of control. I know this storm, have endured it before. Sometimes I think age will carry me above it, that the tempest will lessen and I will one day learn to float, but the instant I crash I am right back where I've always been. What use is there is in learning how to swim when the current will get you eventually? Every rolling wave etches its mark in your skin, in your bones, the lines grow deeper and deeper until it is unclear where you end and the water begins. Without these thrashing storms, I no longer am. 

I only wish I knew how to ride the surf once or twice. Make a life worth the agony of the fall. 

Pause

(I can't do the words justice. I want to, they linger in my head all day and try to assort themselves in the small spaces in my pressure cooker, but come night time I am exhausted and fall heavy into bed without having spoken. 

I ran along the river tonight, early summer warm breeze but cool air and twilight on skyscrapers across Manhattan it was breathtaking. I felt it sink into my heart with every step pounding across the concrete. He sends pictures of an emptied apartment and you begin to realize it is happening. Whether you accept it or not, the days come and go, and long feared days will all appear eventually. 

But you are here, now. New York days stretch around you into infinity. I looked up at my return and saw the Empire State in patriotic colors, as the last remaining peaches and blues settled along the western rim. I am here, now. 

There is no wound, those words cannot heal.)

Molly

We stumbled out of the bar of sawdust floors, perhaps it was still early evening, but the sky was dark and the air unusually cold. I walked five steps south and fell into tears at the light, I didn't care that the girl saw me. This is the last time we come to this bar, he said, and when the bartender asked us to justify our Budweiser request, we had the only acceptable response: This is the routine. This is the last time we'll do this. The future is bright, in all directions. One day, this will all be but a memory.

I'm too drunk for proper words, but perhaps there were none proper enough to begin with. Third avenue lies reassuringly still as I weave through the slow Murray Hill currents, making their way home. The East Village is warm, I take a fuzzy picture of the fish restaurant's neon sign before they close up shop for good. Everything changes.

Imagine a life without his name in your inbox, without his seat next to you at the bar. Lean against the city. Let it take deep breaths with you in it. It is bigger than you. You are insignificant in comparison.

It's a comforting truth. The city moves on, whether you follow or not.

But it will not forget you, entirely.

Bookends

Standing at the station in the old town, above ground, waiting for a connecting train, and the feeling that I'd scream or cry or throw up, because this storm needed to escape somehow. You know these houses, these streets, it's been years already and seems like only yesterday you were homeless in them and built a life out of the sticks you found. You've had a moment's reprieve lately, you didn't realize for you got spoiled in it but that's what it was, just a minute to breathe and be part of the normal world in their calm and that's over now. You were meant for these storms, for this itch, you were meant to hurt. It is a familiar world, you're not afraid, you just forgot and maybe something better will come of it. Say your goodbyes. Bleed over pages. Run from everything but yourself. 

Erase

45 hours in a blip on the map. The roads are winding, you couldn't find your way if your life depended on it, until you pass the church and the yellow house that used to be the country store. We biked there as kids to buy ice cream, do you remember? We stick together in all the pictures, half dressed, my white eyebrows beaming into the frame and her mouth in a pout. The house looked so different then, but the door frame marked with years of growing children remains. 

We sit with bare feet in the grass, stare at the growing vegetables and discuss life. We take slow but determined walks to the lake, brace against the chill of the water and laugh at its perfection. Drink more wine, smoke, talk, rinse, repeat. Let the summer sun sink into the back of my spine. My shoulders turn brown. For 45 hours there is nothing else, no one else to be. I breathe deep breaths and find everything rearranging itself around me. 

I will step out of this current. And everything will be brand new. 

Measures

The train slows as it nears the city, rolling quietly past the little lake where you swam as a child. How impossibly wide it seemed, then. At the station, smiling faces you've never not known, and you stroll together through a town that on the surface seems to be changing, but which underneath is exactly, irrevocably the same. 

The water is beautiful, the trees, the air, throngs on bicycles already brown with the season but your insides itch and you've nowhere safe to turn. Bike along the old railway, a thousand times you've passed that soccer field, a thousand times you've braced yourself for that hill, you could do this in your sleep and maybe that's just it. 

Everything sounds the same, everything looks the same, you love the way you feel in their arms but it could never last. You go to bed in a room that's dark and quiet, pass out before your head hits the pillow. The next day comes quickly.

You're ready to be awake. 

How

I saw you yesterday. Stockholm is sunny and beautiful beyond belief, the water glitters that way it does and I burn my shoulders traversing the islands. I don't sleep. It never gets dark and there isn't time anyway, whoever called this vacation must be delusional. 

At every turn I think I'll see you, at every outdoor restaurant I scan the crowds for your face, but when it actually appeared, how it surprised me. Everything is still there, every tumultuous gut-punching Stockholm night, every dreary day after, of questioning every word you said. I forget I ever had a home anywhere else, that I ever wandered the earth, I lose my footing on the cobblestone streets, there's the old apartment and it's a lifetime ago I even set foot in it, why do I still pretend it matters. 

The train left early this morning. The countryside billows around it, lilacs in full bloom and the entire season at its feet. Your heart is in the same vise as always, anchored in a hundred places without belonging anywhere. The train races on. Prepare your smiles for arrival. 

Rubber Band

Summer sun suddenly, the waters glitter, beckoning you, it won't be warm enough for a swim but you know you can't help yourself. People look up against their will: the power of the season. I listen to those songs and let them wear down their appeal, their power over me. There's memories in these streets that don't seem to go away with time now distance. They lie here in wait for when I bring my poorly constructed shell of an adult back to the scene of the crime. They know I always come back to test the waters. 

It's too cold still, it'll scream in your head, but it can't be helped. I'll dive head first. 

You can't see tears under water. 

Ground Control

Late spring chill. Pale faces in dark clothes and they will not look you in the eyes. You had forgotten. Lilacs are in full bloom, tomorrow they say it will be sun. 

You may walk right next to their carefully manicured lives, but you are miles and miles away. There is no home for you here. 

It occurs you that you didn't want there to be. 

 

Twilight

Eleven o clock and the streets are deserted. It's cold, you had to borrow your sister's boots, and clouds lie heavy over Stockholm. You know this place, you've been here before. Perhaps you once called this home, it's hard to tell. You're drunk now (he calls you, you can't refuse). 

Something beckons you from beyond the veil of memories and busier days. You know it's there but hesitate to see it. Dawn comes over the city before dusk has had the chance to leave. Jet lag runs gravel across your eyes. You try to let it sweep you away. 

All Along the Watchtower

An idea forms along your spine. It's easy, when you're lost, to forget how it feels to find your footing. When you're far off the ledge and floating, how impossible it seems for a lifeline to appear, for a stepladder to arise in nothingness, but then once you stand on it, there never was a question. Adventures spread out around you, great wide futures of open horizons and light duffel bags. You see your hands brown in harvest sun, soil under your fingernails. See yourself building your own destiny again, remembering what sunrise looks like when you have the time to see it.

I sat at MoMA the other day, writing poetic drivel and staring at the throngs, and for a short moment, nothing felt as bad as it had seemed.

I see now how this happens. How entire days can be spent dreaming away and saying someday soon I'll do this and it allows you to bear the sad reality of your existence for another week or month or year or life. You'll go to museums sometimes, or concerts, or sunsets, and be reminded for a short second that there was more to it, but that, too, will fade with time. You go to bed. Relegate another day to the discard pile. You forgot what it was like to have something solid underneath your feet, and you didn't even see it happen.

05

Run in May. 

The itch spreads. At every quiet moment it roars up behind you and whispers of endless horizons and packed bags. You remember again the lightness of not owning more than TSA will allow you to carry, you smile at images of unknown lands. Check your bank account and tally pennies. What recently seemed like a threat in the back of your spine turns into a promise.

These roots, they tie me down, they wrap around my limbs and lungs until I suffocate and I have too much life left to live to succumb to them.

Spring returns.

I'm wide awake.

Neon Signs

Life isn't like they tell you it will be in the movies at all. It isn't a series of contained clips, packaged emotions and vivid dreamscapes that build a narrative. 

They never said it would be so many hours of emptiness. 

That I would be sitting here so much, staring into the void with nothing staring back. 

It doesn't even offer the courtesy 

Of fading to black. 

Impact

Ah how you see the secret of life unravel before you like a predictable romantic comedy. You know the lines before they are spoken but you still hold on with bated breath for the punchline.

Your life now consists of jumping from lily pad to lily pad of distraction, keeping the blood alcohol level high enough to keep the edges of your vision blurry. You sit on the express train from Queens and at every quiet moment between pockets of reception Life rears its ugly head at you. You long for the South, or the wide open spaces of the West, you long for a life you never knew and only imagine with its white picket fences and summer blockbusters, you see the years run away from you with nothing to show for it but piles of confusions and scribbled notes on pieces of paper. I remember the summer of 1998, I remember dry sweat and roasting marshmallows, I remember the soundtrack of 2001 like it's etched in my spine and the sprinklers that would come on when we slept in the backyard and all America lay at our feet. 

Sometimes I think there is something of America in every fiber of my being, something of the heartland that permeates my cells and calls to me when New York cannot keep my blood from boiling. Sometimes I see the winding course of my life laid out so plainly and I cannot follow it because how could I force you to follow such a winding path when your life is much easier without it. 

This morning I found a dead baby bird in the flower pot on the fire escape. Perhaps it's an omen. 

But what the fuck is the point of looking for signs from the Universe

When reality is already swirling your head 

In the toilet bowl. 

Bad Things

For short moments, it seems all is quiet. There's a slight unease in my muscles, but it could just be the weather, it could just be the passing winds and I step into obvious traps thinking myself invincible. But oh how quickly the air can be knocked out of you, and you curse your carelessness. Time is running out, and part of me longs for it. Perhaps everything will be still on the other side, perhaps the quiet calm will not be an illusion but an open door to other views.

Someday I will look back on this time in patronizing fondness. You build mountains out of grains of sand. Wait for the tide to wash your castle out to sea.

Bullet Proof

The ginkgoes bud eventually. Little knobs like a bad infection dotting their entire bodies. Other trees are further along, with sprightly new-green leaves exploding into the sky. I run, further and further south along the island, conduct long conversations in my head and forget to turn back, arrive at the bottom of the stairs with no words and no strength to climb. 

Where are you, lately?

I keep cutting my hair, restless with ennui and scared of complacency. It gets severely shorter every time, great tufts of golden hair at the bottom of the bathroom sink, eventually I'll have to face the fear instead because there'll be nothing left to cut. My mother sorts through 27 years of my life and asks what I want to do with it. 

Keep the letters, I want to say. Burn the rest. 

To the Edge

Prince dies. The year reels with loss, magic dust floating in the rafters and sifting into space beyond. The week is warm, and I sleep my first nights with an open window. Second avenue is mad outside, for many hours still.

I spent the day cleaning, scrubbing corners long ignored and turning upside down the fabrics of my life to see what may have gotten lost in the folds. Nothing surprising appears, but the reminders are useful. May always makes you want to run; it lies in wait with the lilacs. It's almost been a year since I left Morton Street, but it seems a lifetime.

It occurs to me that love may be that thing 
where you never tire of the object 
of your affection. 
That you remain in awe, 
and grateful, 
every time you truly think of it. 
(April, 2015)

Consider the leap.
You're just as dead
if you stand still.

Carte Blanche

If you could say one thing
and have it forgotten by tomorrow
what would you say?

All day the words swirl inside you, in the warm April sun and throngs of Central Park revelers. What is it in confession that offer the faithful such relief? The deed has already been done. You may be forgiven, but there is no erasing the sin.

Your hangover reeked in the summery afternoon. She sat next to you on the great lawn eating ice cream and giggling. Some moments are unbreakable.

No free pass comes
without a cost.

Muse

"Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand."

—George Orwell

Samarkanda

I see now

That it was not your job

To give me the life I thought

I deserved

And couldn't make for myself. 

I'm sorry I asked it of you. I'm sorry I was disappointed when you didn't come through. If you see me in the street I hope you'll say hello. I have a buried hatchet to give you, if you'll have it. 

Slow Dancer

Across the water, a baby boy is born. I sat crying on my couch, washed over with relief, with wonder. My how the day grows long when all you can do is wait. 

You were the first person I wanted to tell. I don't know what that means. I guess it is what it is. I spent the evening tracing bloodlines in his features, considering miracles and counting years into the future. How children become our best bet for immortality. How nothing reminds us more that we are mortal. 

Spring forces its way into the concrete streets, the frozen hearts, of the city without apology. This year seems more beautiful than the last, but perhaps it's just your mind playing tricks on you. There's a new puppy on Morton Street. April blows the dust from lives around you, clears the cobwebs. You think maybe it's time you came clean, too. 

May always makes you run. Maybe you should let it. 

Burrow

Manhattan slips slowly away behind you, all postcard perfect and the sky is so blue in the April afternoon. You stare willfully at the old skyscrapers, the newer glass behemoths, the wide avenues that run without obstruction to the other end of the island. There's something familiar in the view, a feeling you know so well but haven't felt in so long. It's that you came here for a reason, that New York was once magical to you and held within it unending promise, if you would fight for it. I stared out at the Statue of Liberty with wind blown hair and tried to remember it in my gut: a time when I wasn't afraid to not walk the straight and wide. 

He called from across the lands one morning, to tell you of writing endeavors and calling it Real. We could rent a fire watchtower in Wyoming, he said, spend a summer there and just write. I was knee deep in paper work at the time, wading through the piles of someone else's ambition, and his voice seemed not so much a promise or admonishment as simply a kind caress to reawaken that part of you that already knew what he was saying. 

Make it real. 

You can't live anyone's life 

But your own. 

Post

(ps. I need you. 
In ways I shouldn't ask. 
And wouldn't know how to, 
if I could.)

Vinyl

The blues do strange things with a person. They dig themselves deep into your muscle tissue and vibrate through your body until you sweat and bleed thick droplets of unapologetic Life, and that is all it takes. I stumbled home last night, drunk and so tired, the city seemingly stuck in its own rut and everybody was in my way. Where is punk rock in this city anymore?

I did too much, I know I did. The West Village is flush with callery pear blossoms and I think, for a moment, that I am invincible, but it is not so. We stood there in the dark listening to self-aware bands making eyes like the Bangles and you thought I'm wasting my life away. Time is moving too quickly and too slowly at the same time, do you ever feel that way? My father calls from across the country and still hasn't started his life. We get such little time.

Standing in your kitchen in the dark, with the blues pouring out of you like lightly disguised poison, it is not the way to make the most of it.

Find a way
to stand in the streets
and scream it.

JFK

Mountains upon mountains, dry desert sands and wrinkles in the ground, you know the land beneath you like you know the map of your own skin. The sun sets quietly behind you as the plane races into night, back to home. You read Anaïs Nin and contemplate New York concrete in summer, the touch of strangers. Delight in the freckles forming along your arms, but that is the only remnant of the west coast you want to retain. Let the rest wash off in the night. 

Tomorrow you will wake up to he sounds of Second avenue, and if ever it angered you before, you will smile at it now and all will be forgiven. Manhattan spreads out beneath you like a beloved friend. Whispers of a million mornings in its embrace. Of a million nights when you may rest. 

Sleight

West Hollywood in March lies quiet at the edge of the hills. Calm oases of palm trees and rose bushes at every corner, slight inclines and roaring intersections. I ran blind through the neighborhood and landed sweating at the gate sooner than expected but my veins still pumping like mad. You wonder what it is you are trying to catch. 

I stepped onto the beach, later, and even the cool ocean breeze couldn't keep me from smiling into the afternoon. The water was cool, but smelled of salt, and it pulled at me just the way it does in my dreams: I dove in and let it promise me the world. There's still sand on my skin though I showered after we came home. I believe it may just be metaphorical. 

Runyon

People seem lighter here, smiles come quicker, the sun shines brighter. Mountains after mountains, all lush, green, thick with satisfaction. Your pale skin flushes by mid day. 

You wonder who you are, really. 

Virgin

Jamaica, Queens, passes in a rush, terminals disappear behind you until you are unearthed in the clear, crisp space of JFK in the afternoon. Go through the motions, feel the knot around your spine relax, come home. 

There's a small space, a few hours across, where you are weightless. You try to take deep breaths, try to see the sun set over the Pacific Ocean in your mind. Your heart is heavy, but you will yourself to believe it will pass. Tomorrow you will wake up in a different land. Decide what should fit in your baggage. 

Bread

Oh how you tumble and fall. How the humid south whispers to you of wrap around porches and simpler lives, you dive head first into a lifestyle you can never absorb into your skin and it wears at your long-nursed ambition. Your father calls from a basement in the homeland, sharing images of a life you stored for future use, but that the future quickly bypassed. You cannot let it go, but you have no space to keep it. Your history bleeds out into recycling bins and second hand stores, and you are powerless to save it. Your present seems a week plant onto which to grasp: no roots, no solid branches onto which to hang your swing, no fresh sprigs when spring reappears on which to plant your hope. You are without a story.

The sun shines bright on this end of the Vernal Equinox, but the wind is cold, still.

You fear it is fresh air blowing through your tumbleweed shell, and nothing more.

Jumble

Spring continues, unabated, undeterred by its naive youth. The streets flood with people, as though it were never any other way and you strain to remember solitude. No matter. Spring does what it always does with you, clearing cobwebs and scratching at molting skin to make way for new shoots. The sunlight creeps into your reserves, as you take stock of your life and what you may yet make of it. 

I took the train to Queens to watch the baby grow, Saturday tourists and the train running local but I couldn't help savoring the minutes spent rocking through the New York underground, like some zen entity at peace with the equilibrium and unfazed by the terrors that lie just outside the bubble. Whatever happens next, you made it this far. When you step off this train and climb to the surface, the sun will be shining. 

Pawn

I smiled today, a deep smile that started in my toes, twisted and curled its way upwards through my body, expanded in my chest and flushed my cheeks, I looked strangers in the eyes and let myself beam at them. Union Square was awash with sunlight, with summery warmth and rows of faces, the farmer's market buzzing with traffic. Spring ran like a mad hatter inside me and the giggle lasted all day.

It returns
It returns
You'll remember 
soon
what it is 
to live. 

Hello

I know it before I've opened my eyes. There's a difference in the way the light hits my bedroom curtains. I see it before I've even stepped out on the stoop -- something in the light gait of people in the street below. Spring has hit the city like a tidal wave, dancing into every nook and reviving even the dustiest of corners. On the fourth floor of the bookstore, someone has opened a window, like the tiniest rebellion. I sit in the park for a minute before resigning myself to the workday ahead. A man walks by with five dogs in a jumble. Everything's different. 

We're okay. 

Measures

The last of the cold seems to pass in a heavy sigh. Sunlight floods our dirty windows. There's a pot in the corner, where hopeful sprouts shoot into the ether. I ran along the river, the sun had just set though it was evening, and the air was mild. Scores of runners, out from hibernation no doubt, ran like calves let out to pasture, all mismatched socks and spastic limbs. The streets smelled like New York again, everything returns. I cling to weather forecasts like life rafts. Did we make it out alive? I'm not ready to look back and survey the damage just yet. 

But give me a minute, 

and at least I might open my eyes. 

Leap Year

She says to take deep breaths, she says to let your mind drift away and be empty, she says to relax. Her soft, swaying voice follows such a light ripple in the waters; how you are supposed to float on the lightness of Nothingness and resurface brand new. She doesn't know that when the waters are still, the monsters below have free rein, that you must rage the current on your own to keep them at bay. I fail miserably with all she asks of me, and I arise from the waves out of breath and entirely abused.

What point is there in these possessions, this stability? What point is there in regular paychecks and recurring tv shows, in sleeping well at night? Sometimes I think I chase them only because someone said so. Most days I fear I accept them because I believe it's all I'm good for.

It's no coincidence my greatest fear is drowning,
while my greatest joy is barreling through the surf.

Plains

(It happens, quietly. From the corner of your eye you can see your life spiraling out of control, helplessly barreling head first into a dark vacuum far below your feet, but you are too far removed from your own self to grasp what it means. You don't feel a thing.

That doesn't mean it's not happening.)

Bulletproof

I quit my job, he says. It was taking up too much time, and when I look back at any job I've had, I realize that none of them mattered. He crafts his  day in artistic fervor, writes and rewrites with lunatic dedication, while I while away the days over frivolous rhyme. His excitement ignites mine as well -- it always did. We were young, once, we were 18 and the world lay at our feet and when he told me to run into it, I did. I have forgotten so much.

He seems to be dancing still.

The call ended, the houselights came back on. I see how you walk down that wide, paved road of common expectations, make your way down the checklist without fail. But what if he is right, and we are wrong? What if life is better lived in madness? The apartment you own, the money that you've saved, the job that is appropriate and a clever next step, one day you will look back at them.

Will you think they mattered?

Off

There was a time
when this city meant more
than just the drudgeries
of a life that could be lived anywhere.

I saw his face on the screen today. I have forgotten to look for it. It's been so many years since that summer on the roof -- we took a cab one hundred miles to Brooklyn and brought beer without an opener and couldn't wait till we arrived. The party was sweaty and loud and full of promise. Anyway, it's forever ago, I barely recognize your face, would I even know your eyes if I saw them in the street? For one full week I was star struck but whatever. You played the guitar in a band and had a fixie, such a cliche.

I could really use a drink.

Scape

My teeth hurt again. I begin to imagine that the gods are trying to speak to me through my ailing body, but what would they say that I have not already shouted from the roof tops. The city is plunged into a polar vortex of unimaginable proportions; every step is a brutal reminder of its power. I take long baths, refill with only hot water and resurface dizzy. Another hospital is bombed in Syria. Religious terrorists hijack supposedly democratic elections and the land of the free is unrecognizable sometimes in daylight. My sister comes to town and it's the last time she'll sleep, alone, in my home. Next time everything is different.

The world falls apart around me and I don't know if it is enough to count down days until spring. The sets are all so perfectly manicured but none of it is real when you run your finger nails across the surface. David Bowie continues to create magic after he is dead.

You only create layers of dust. You're barely alive, as is.

Shine

There was a moment, last night, I walked east from Hell's Kitchen to catch the F train and I looked south to see Times Square glitter and yell down Broadway, and though normally it would seem a gaudy display of poor taste, for a second I reveled in it. This strange town. 

I took the train to Queens tonight to see the baby, and she was all the things newborn babies are while they do not fathom their power. On my way home, the train running local, I saw every type of person, and it wrapped me in such a comforting blanket. My roommate was still up -- the light shone from the living room when I looked up three floors from the corner at Second avenue; I smiled. 

Everything is moving so fast. You decide to throw your cares to the wind. Run like a madman where the streets will lead. 

Lilly Jayne

The week passes in a struggle of the seasons. Cold rain gives way to spring-like mornings and birdsong, only to fall prey to heavy, thick snow, and all the Instagrammers stop in their tracks at Union Square to photograph the trees. The snow disappears by mid-day. She sits on the couch grimacing in regular intervals. They're getting worse. He looks anxiously at his watch, counting seconds, referring back to printed instructions. I leave them in the early evening. Say Try to get some sleep if you can. You have a lot of work ahead of you.

The baby arrives late the next day. She sends pictures of a beaming father and a sleeping bundle in hospital blankets. Second avenue screams its Friday night fervor as per usual, but for two people in Queens, New York, everything has changed. I tossed for a long time in my bed, trying to make sense of the world.

Perhaps there isn't any to make. Just roll with the punches. Figure it out as you go.

Angels

The sun is bright, April sun in January and at every red light I stop and stare straight into it. The streets are full of people, Saturday strollers and west village boutique shoppers, they all walk too slow and I pass them awkwardly, realizing soon I don't have the energy to keep up with everyone ahead of me. Union square is overwhelming, I know my eyebrows are creasing but I can't make it stop. Ride the escalator up to the fourth floor, I'm too tired to stand still but the bookstore is the only refuge I can think of. There's a reading area upstairs, just rows and rows of folding chairs and my first summer in New York I saw Regina Spektor here and it was a beautiful thing. I found an empty row near a column, carefully plan my seating so it will be uninviting to other readers. The book is all death and loss, my eyes can barely focus on reading. In the back of my head, words form and stroke me like an old friend would when you are sick. They so often show up when everything else is dead. It's a tricky tightrope to navigate. 

I keep falling off. It doesn't get any easier. 

Eighths

Did it catch you yet? She says over the ether. It's hit me now, so I thought maybe you, too. I drag my leaden limbs into the living room. Forget the coffee until it is cold. My voice is raspy; it sounds old. You'd be tired of this broken record if you weren't so exhausted overall.

The story came out unexpectedly, but you'd been waiting for ages, so it didn't need explaining. He thought you'd be upset, or disappointed perhaps, I know how you feel about these things, but somehow he's got it all wrong. In the darkest unending night, a sliver of light so bright you smiled the whole way home. It isn't relative to anything else. There is Good, yet.

Take it for what it is worth.

Disorder

It comes at last, like an old friend. It drapes your senses in damp, heavy cloth and drags you across the days. You listen to people speaking at you and it's all you can do to still look them in the eye. I thought it was better this year, you hear yourself say to no one in particular. You begin to suspect that it never will be.

I sat by their grand piano in the country, stale fingers tripping across the keys and it pains you to see how much you've lost. But I remembered the songs, remembered how they would tear at me and what anguish evaporated from me in their presence. The blissful calm that takes its place. I could have sat there for hours. She came in now and then, her little fingers playing trolls and princesses on the ivory and we laughed for a second, but I was somewhere else for most of the day.

A few days later, at a bar in the crooked streets of the West Village, his Russian accent said this is the last winter I'll spend here, as his dreaming eyes took him to palm trees and Venice Beach. I wanted to agree with him. But I know that won't be me. I've said I'll take you in sickness and in health.

The Darkness is here now, New York. I need you to help me hold my head above water.

the New Year

The storm engulfs New York City. It's the worst blizzard in 150 years. My news feed fills with stories, but we are blissfully unaware. There's a full moon out; it bathes the rolling fields in an eery bright light, like a spotlight and it leaves strange shadows across the frost. The stars are brighter here; it's freezing. When I go to bed there is no sound but embers crackling in the fireplace. No ghosts whispering their illicit evils. They have nothing new to say anyways, would I even hear them if they came? Close my eyes. 

Will the future to feel different. The storm to pass once more. 

Smoke and Ash

When we leave the city, it is still quiet. The sky shivers in anticipation but the ground is dry. We snake through the woods for hours and the locals say there won't be any snow. She writes from the city to say it's already started. We light a fire and the old farm house creaks in the warmth. 

Later, when everyone had gone to sleep and the house was silent, I milled around the kitchen, washing dishes and setting dough for the morning. A full moon outside cast shadows across the rolling hills, but the monsters stayed away. The fire turned to embers in the fireplace. 

Maybe if I tell myself

Enough

The wine was the best we'd ever had, but I think perhaps it was just happiness we were tasting. We're not out of the woods, but for what it's worth, I think we may well be in the clear. 

Ice

A storm makes its way toward the east coast. Promises destruction and standstills. You pack your bag and consider the temperature. 

Wonder how much you can bury in snow. 

On Fire

I started writing a new story today. It couldn't be helped. Somewhere between a minute of silent solitude and the sweat of scrubbing wood floors it formed itself while I wasn't watching. I sat by the typewriter trying to catch it as the last lingering chords of his playlist ebbed out into the freezing night. There is still snow on the citibikes and parked cars. You feel the cold claws of January reach for you; there's a panicked smile on your face trying to conceal it, but you know it's almost at your neck, breathing cold darkness in your ear and you are one tripped step from falling into its clutches.

When I walk into a room
I do not light it up
Fuck

The story is the only thing that can save you, now.

Burst

It snows.

For the first time all winter, soft flakes fly to the ground in droves, although they turn quickly to water on the sidewalks. A little dusting of white remains on the citibikes. We went to the zoo yesterday and looked at the penguins, fed the sheep. I think she would have been just as happy just walking down the street. She spoke of her new home, a thousand miles away and I didn't know how to tell her what it's like to leave all this behind. There may come a time when she can tell  people she grew up in New York but she'll no longer remember what it felt like. We sat on a bench and snuggled. I was glad there was nothing I could say. 

They built a shrine two doors down from my apartment, at the theater where his latest show is on. Flowers and candles and yesterday when I came home a group of people stood singing. I find myself slowing down every time I pass, nodding slightly in his general direction. The flowers won't survive the snow. 

There's a metaphor in there. 

Don't look too close. 

the Stars Look Very Different, Today

David Bowie died yesterday.

There are many words to be said. All day have you not mulled them over in your head, stopping in the street and trying to make sense of the leaden letters within. I nearly cried on the train to Williamsburg, Manhattan glittering in the distance and the irony of rolling around in a tin can with all the time in the world ahead of you, despite how the world speaks of it most days.

There is something of New York in Bowie, or of Bowie in New York. That the most beautiful being will give you the time of day, and in so doing, will make your every crooked caveat acceptable, will make your ugly, sad, and misfit pieces lovable. And when something like that goes missing, there are no words left to say, no songs left to write.

The walk home was freezing cold, the sky clear and full of stars, but dull, somehow, though you couldn't put your fingers on it. I went home to my typewriter and let it compete with the riser in bringing the blood back to my fingertips. There is too much to be said. But you have to start somewhere.

David Bowie is dead.

You are not.

The Only Rule is Work

You feel it as you walk in the door. Sunday night angst grips your heart and wrings your lungs. As the clock ticks, it spins down your appendages. I try to hug myself on the couch to no use, find myself scrubbing the kitchen tiles in a fit as my mind begins the slow descent to madness. Sunday night. The last shaking minutes until it is too late to stare Truth right in the eyes. If you just ride out the storm, Monday morning will come soon to relieve you, bring you Other People's Problems and a checklist outside your own twisted psyche.

(But you could, whispers a voice inside you, run straight into it, you could leap fearlessly into the jaws of the beast, savor the few minutes of time when you remember what it is to bleed, and feel, and live, again. You could breathe pain, and love, and art, for just a few lingering moments, and while it might break you down, is it not also the only thing ever worth doing?)

A mint green typewriter stands in my window.

The entire world lies at our feet.

On the Day Shift

It sounds so far away, now, when they speak of upcoming ife in the home land. It's real close for them. They talk of contracts, of apartment views and street numbers, and as you try to conjure the images in your head, it's as though everything comes to you through a mist. It's like you know the feeling, but don't recognize it as yours. 

Plans are made for a weekend upstate, wishes for snow and recipes for winter stews squeezed on a calendar page. As dreamy recollections of another trip years ago resurface, you find the same surreal sheen on the memories, the same impenetrable heart beating dully in your chest. Perhaps you are too old to feel anymore, perhaps the regular joys and pains of life no longer reach through your thick skin the way they did. Perhaps you are safe within your fortress, at last. 

It's alright, ma 

I'm only dying. 

And Uptown

It's unseasonably warm. She looks for apartments on St Mark's Place and you remember a time when that block would have been your every dream. Now you arrange your furniture on Second Avenue, in an apartment you didn't know you could love but suddenly do, without condition. The television streams images of New York in spring, all bright flowers and easy saunters. It's within reach. 

And you know it's worth the wait. 

Figure of Eight

I dreamed of shooting stars last night, they fell and fell, so many that I barely had time to register one before another dashed past my field of vision. I tried to make wishes for each one and laughed, my heart so light with the idea that a thousand lovely things were to happen. The year ahead seemed bright then; I woke full of promise and optimism.

The sun shone brightly today, as I pandered to the cliché of starting a new year with a clean slate, unending opportunity in the road ahead. I listened to old Beatles albums, remembering a summer in the Australian outback, the delicious curiosity of childhood, trying to figure out the meaning of a language I was only just coming to understand and knowing there must be more meaning to it than simply letters in a sleeve. A small writing desk stands suddenly in a corner of my bedroom: old, scuffed, and rickety, yet already dear to my heart. The hidden meaning in its existence needs no explanation; I run my fingers along it and relax in its wooden, dusty scent. There is magic in unopened drawers, shooting stars in hopefulness.

I've been hitting the town
and it didn't hit back. 

All good things, shall come to pass.

Rear Views

So for 2015, I wish you more, so much more of the good. I wish you a room in the East Village and more money in your bank account. I wish you more New York than your little heart can handle... I hope you laugh plenty. I hope you walk these streets and smile, even after all these years, and that you are grateful to have the chance. In short, my dear, I wish you a Happy New Year.

Life is more than a collection of checked boxes, I'm sure. But to look back on a year, satisfied, and look forward on another, hopeful, is surely a treat to be savored, a moment of reprieve in a life that races forward. The sun shone bright through the curtains this morning. We have so far to go.

But when the paper is blank,
how easy to believe we will get there.