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.