Mockingbird

He sends you a story, not long, not perfect, but you think, there is work here, there is labor and ambition and he's gotten somewhere. You read it, leave red notes in the margins, admire his efforts too much to remember your envy. Count down days till unknown landslides, you are sure they will place you somewhere better, it's only the tumble that's scary. Drink budweisers in front of the future of America yelling across the tv screen; my generation must have something to say, there is a war going on in our midst we will not be left out. We will not go unscathed. 

When you look back at your days, 

What will you wish you had done?

Go do it. 

Canary

The autumnal equinox arrives, all pumpkin spice promise and darkened evenings but the sunshine lingers and bakes the park mid-day. One roommate gets engaged, and the ring takes up more space in the apartment than could possibly be carried on a light limb. They commit to a life time and I can't even settle on a regular coffee order.

Brace yourself.

Winter is coming.

You Said

It rained today, in the way it does not in summer but in fall. The humidity made my skin soft, but cloying. There's no escape from weather like that. I sat in a corner, let the guitar build calluses of my hands, as it washed over me in swells.

I said I wouldn't be one of those people who speaks of dreams and never lives them, how does age creep up so slowly and strangle you with complacency. There's a hunger in me that will not be sated by quick carbohydrates, by 9-5 and steady paychecks. Fires die down without oxygen, you can suffocate it if it scares you and reduce it to stardust but it turns out that the raging storms are not what should scare you at all. The slow death underneath that lid, the quiet darkness that eviscerates you when you've let your guard down, that's what should keep you up at night.

And maybe the worst part is that it doesn't.

Walk/Run

Such sweltering heat, such neverending fog to wade through. Pity men their suit jackets. Clear your phone of social media and end up with hours of solitaire, what did you accomplish? 

A bomb explodes in Chelsea and everyone scrambles for a connection. It's been so long since the Ground was a pile of rubble but longer still for those who were children when it happened. I saw it in a museum but the pictures weren't black and white. 

I have long conversations with you when I run. You don't know it. Your answers are eloquent, sometimes you say what I wish you did and others what I wish you wouldn't. You don't know it. Entire lifetimes play out between Williamsburg Bridge and Battery Park, past the kids playing quidditch, the Chinese women with their synchronized dancing and the tourists who don't know how to walk where I don't trample them. You follow me, whisper in my ears. Sometimes I run faster to get away from your words, but I never seem to run fast enough. 

Everywhere I turn, I want to tell you about it. 

Mississippi

When did life become so unbearably sad? When did it turn into an ever-louder question of whether to cut your losses now and live in bland complacency or cling on to some grandiose idea of complete fulfillment while watching the chasm between dream and reality widen into an impossible canyon? Is this what life is? Did everyone answer this question already and reveal none of the secret? 

You lie awake at night asking

To what end.