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.