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.