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.