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.