Ends

A year ends, how quickly it passes. You remember its infancy, how it seemed a beautiful new opportunity to contrast the year that passed but then buried itself in so much sludge again. Still, you know you will forever look back on the year fondly, caress its memories and remember that you were more you at the end of it than when it was new and unwritten.

You approach the new year cautiously, afraid suddenly to lose what you have packed in your bags, afraid suddenly because there is so much to lose. Winter creeps into your heart, into your hopes, you know it's only in your head, how can you possibly explain this entire life to someone else, what if you drown in the ice after all and haven't written all your words yet no surely you must survive. I sing again like I haven't in years, and the stars are burning, they'll melt the frost, they'll lead the way, tomorrow is a new year and everything that is to come is too beautiful not to tell.

Paradise Cove

Wake in a daze, thick layers of clothing but the radiator came on and steam runs in rivulets down your windows: don't come to New York if you're not interested in suffering. Stay in bed for hours before braving the snow, it looks nothing like the white sands of Venice, but you have no regrets. This is your home, this is real. Your shoulders are still brown. Your dreams are yours to own.

A new year beams on the horizon. It's asking you for everything.

And you have everything to give.

Terminal 7

Los Angeles on a Friday morning is quieter than you'd expect, still and soft in the sunlight, pleasant. It's always pleasant. You get to the airport early and maneouver the hiccups until you end up with a direct flight next to each other and an upgrade. There's even time to sneak out of the airport for a last In-n-out meal and everything makes you laugh, it's a dream.

The forecast on the other coast calls for an ice age apocalypse; it's never been so cold. Your travel companions rebook their travels to stay perpetually in SoCal sunshine and you don't blame them. A week of summer underneath your fingernails, a week of sunshine on your shoulders, it sinks into your spine and you do not take any of it for granted, don't ever look back and think I did. You can still feel the pull of the ocean, of that last perfect wave in your muscles, of the way it feels to step into the sea when there is nothing else ahead of you but cool, salty freedom.

The forecast for the other coast calls for an ice age.

But you bring a fire that doesn't go out.

Puddles

It catches up with you eventually, the race, the weight of family tracks in your innards, the wheels get stuck. I sat on the couch in apathy and watched a house of cards tumble around me, felt myself carried away with the wind. He writes from an airport and says look at your feet, how they touch the ground, how you touch the ground, and I did. They do. I took a deep breath, let the earth sink back into my feet, put on my running shoes and pounded down the Pacific Coast Highway to the place where the great waves roar and I dove right in.

There's a magic in salt water, there's a medicine in the cold ocean, I let it thrash me in and out to shore a few times before I emerged brand new. There's a smile based in my shoulders now, a California sunrise behind my temples and tomorrow's forecast calls for blue skies again, the story isn't perfect but I keep writing it and that's the point.

These tracks are only to show me where I've been, they don't tell me where I have to go.

But Soft

How strange it is; you step into that little box and emerge in another world entirely. Escape the clichéd bottleneck highway and drive down a wild canyon at sunset, watching the pinks and purples wash across unending sky and dive into a quiet ocean. In the early morning, colder than you thought palm trees would allow, smile at strangers and wave cautiously at gracious drivers; my brusque New York energy stubs its edges against California sunshine but it only makes you appreciate the grit of your veins more. It is too pleasant here, you hear yourself say in your head, what art could they possibly accomplish? You miss dirty Brighton Beach and noisy Second Avenue; you miss the rattle of radiators and 4 am street corner arguments beneath your window; you miss impatient cashiers, seamless transit currents and skin that doesn't all look like your own. They say everybody moves to the West Coast eventually, but I don't know. This pleasant beach breeze looks like a postcard.

And in the end there's no place like home.

To Palm

The flight leaves so early, we all pull down the shades to sleep like a tired unit in agreement. I wade in and out of in-flight entertainment but perk up for mysterious reasons 2 hours before landing. Pull up the shade. Crisp white peaks of the southern Rockies spread out below like quiet mile posts. A few minutes later, the arid red deserts of my home rest underneath us, snaking rivers carving intricate patterns into the rock and giant buttes reaching like monoliths into the sky. I think I saw those mittens in a movie once and I'm not sure from which side of the camera. The familiarity is reassuring; in a tin can full of strangers, I smile.

We are not stopping here, we do not stop until we reach the coast, until we reach the palm trees and sunshine we've been promised, I refresh the arrival data and count down minutes. Four hours of sleep and I should be more tired. But there is life to be lived, and precious moments to squeeze out of the last of the year, you read through a journal and cannot remember who you were at the start, but no matter.

You are here now. You are happy. And the forecast calls for sun.

Tick

Race
Race
Race
The clock runs away from you and you can only barely spot the Red Queen in the distance: too much left to do and never enough time to do it. The season yells its cheer at you from static speakers, there's a hollowness in people's eyes that do not line up with the smiling billboards. But I sat on the living room floor of a sleeping apartment in the mild afternoon, taking slow breaths and allowing the light back inside my rib cage. I let it grow there until it needed out again, spreading out along the walls, seeping through the cracks in the doors, and beaming across the entire island. When I opened my eyes, the Red Queen sat quietly by my side, the countryside still swirling around us but we left it be. Good things are to come, only good things, I spent a lifetime building this fire and now here it is, ready.

Now here I am.
Ready.

Rash

The weeks race ahead, a year twists and yelps in death rattles disguised as cheer; you write a hundred lists to keep track of what it was you wanted to do before the slate is washed clean, but at the end of the day only one thing matters. You sit at your word processor and wonder at possibility. For so long the pages were built with fear, like you were pummeling toward a destiny you didn't think you could handle, and now you know the opposite is true. That you kept running not for the sheer desire of punishing yourself against the brick wall, but because inside your twisted scrap metal of a chest beat a heart that could not be silenced, even by you, and it believed even when you doubted, (especially when you doubted,) it carried on. Behind you lie printer paper piles, not of failure, but of lessons learned. You see now they've lined your house, they've packed your bags, they've softened the blow. You see now they made you the home for which you were always searching. You see now they built the staircase to the precipice on which you stand.

A year comes to a close, a climb. Around the corner lies a blank page, an open door, the top of the hill and all you have to do is run out to it. All you have to do is fly.

6

Sit at the bar digesting visions of French countryside and a life in art. Stare down a perfect drink at a pair of unwavering eyes and see the plan draw itself in front of you. The only life that matters is the one lived in art. Hold that to your core and the rest will arrange itself according to the map. You wish you had a notebook -- nothing ever sticks in your mind if you do not write it down -- but this will remind itself to you again, and again, you know it. The only life that matters is the one lived in art. It all seems simple only because it is. Live in art and none of your life will have been in vain.

For a short moment, you have no fear.

Perhaps that is what you should remind yourself.

Cleavage, cleavage, cleavage

It wears her. Out.

Overnight, the temperature plummets. You look out the window and everything looks the same, except the sidewalks are empty. Everything withers, a year comes to a close, you gather up the threads and attempt to see the weave they made. A new year lies in wait on the horizon, bright and shiny like an unwritten page. You vow to choose your words carefully, but with courage. Blessings pile up around your tattered clothes and unkempt hair, a radiator slaves away underneath your broken window, and typewriters don't care about the weather, they only care about you having something to say.

I still don't paint futures,
but I am still here.
I am staying on the page.

Thaw #3

Recovery is slow, but steady. I sat down at the word processor to find that everything I thought lost in the snow was still there, waiting, biding its time until I was ready to unearth it. A little matchstick girl sits freezing in a corner and I've been so afraid to touch her lest I could not carry her out, but I am not afraid now. Not all days carry a great torch, some only a small flame, but even a little ember may thaw some ice, and every day you do not freeze is a day you win. I know her path, even on days when I sit silent and the page freezes white I know her path and I will clear it for her, every day I do not freeze is a day I win.

Is a day I bleed with purpose.

In the Pines

The sky is grey, the air has that cold look it gets in December and it's clear what's about to come: snowfall. How many hours left, you lift a finger into the air and try to taste it. A day ago the sun shone bright, as you lay writhing in a bed trying to out the demons. They fled on their own, but not without tearing through your flesh first. You cannot eat, cannot think, only sleep and count the money you're losing. Try to imagine there's a lesson in there somewhere. While you sit at the kitchen table, upright at last and staring down a cup of coffee like it's a game of chicken, a mouse scampers across the living room floor to hide in a yoga mat. You throw it out on the fire escape, watch it flail. Namaste.

A social media reminder tells me it's been 6 years since we went to that bar, the unassuming one in a terrible corporate neighborhood but it was perfect and we shared such joy in knowing it. We never went back there. It's just as well. Don't fix what isn't broken. And if it's broken but you don't know what to do about it, sometimes the only thing is let it go.

Namaste.

Baby A

We stood in an abandoned playground and let an entire tree worth of leaves shower down on us with every gust of wind. Little droplets snuck in under our coat hoods, and even with the mild Temperatures it was clear this was autumn weather. Undeterred, she pulled me toward the steps along the side of the fence, leading up to a gate and out into the rest of the park. She held my hand fast to steady her little body as she took step after step up those steps. At the top, she turned around, wavered, and walked back down again.

A hundred times we've climbed these steps, a thousand since she learned how to use her feet for walking, and still the same joy at accomplishing it each time, still the same pride and relentless tenacity, again and again she climbs and descends,  climbs and descends. An entire playground was built around her, with colorful construction and inviting adventures, but she needs none of them. The boring, every day rut of walking a few steps is something else completely to her, and I follow her up, down, up, down, in a state so mindful, so near zen, that I understand what they mean when they say children are wiser than we are.

She looks up at me, beaming. Claps for herself and waits for me to join, applauding her wondrous achievements and delighting in the feeling of mastering something new. The lesson lines up in front of me and all I have to do is see it. Do something new, something you couldn't do before but you learned. Now do it again. Be as thrilled about it this time, and next time, adore the sensation and rejoice in your strength. We never master, we only find new things to learn. One step at a time.

Be here, now.

(The Line)

And so it was that I returned on track, that I picked up the pieces of my defeated faith and singed ego,  and sat down at the blank page again to carry on. The day escaped me, the night raced in a blur of Story, I remembered again why I came and why I remained, I remembered there were words to say that have not yet been written and the job is mine to do it.

Another day of work came, of dear reunions and strong drinks; I sang through them all. In my chest beats a heart again, it has always been there but now it holds me to my promises, this is comforting. The Word whispers its secrets again. My skin tingles in magic.

On Gratitude

The whirlwind escalates. Life flashes before you in a mad rush, you work, you laugh, you have no time for rest and your body screams to no avail, you haven't the time to stop and listen. Fall asleep every night before your head hits the pillow, see your main character wither at the edge of your vision and you want so much to hold her, to carry her forward but you don't know how to put her first, it's the same story over and over and rent is due on the first you count your pennies. Suddenly an unexpected opening; the Universe steps in to open a window. You see a streak of light and hold on to it like a child.

The point of life is not to never fall off the track. The point is to get back on it. I rested on my laurels and how sweet a sleep it is but how stagnant. The world vibrates around me in opportunity, loved ones take hesitant steps on shaky legs and marvel at their own strength. I sat for a quiet moment in a bar on the lower Lower East Side with a deep breath in my lungs and silent tears in my eyes and marveled at presence. These days will run past us if we do not see them. These people will leave us if we do not hear them. Life gets sticky and perhaps you can't skirt by it anymore. I take the little girl's hand in mine. Gently. Like I love her.

The only way out is through. 

2017

(There is much to say but perhaps infinite time to say them. The point is, this year I am grateful
for you.)

Chandelier

At last the excuses have run themselves out, at last every distraction has been dealt with and the wine bottle lies empty in the recycling bin it is late but you do not sleep. At last you sit down by the blank page and caress it until letters fall out, until black ink smears the margins and your head dances again in pictures.

At last you remember - truly remember not just in platitudes but in your heart - that you have seen the other side and did not belong in it, that you are not fearful of work but of the lack thereof, that you may get distracted by the well lit path but it is not for you to walk. Year after year you remember, you are reminded. The story unfolds at your fingertips it is late but you are not tired.

You are what rises from your ashes.

to Show Me

(We sat in the late autumn sunlight and watched yellow leaves dance to the ground and I thought I have never seen pain. In a messy room in an East Village tenement building, a word processor lies untouched, a pile of pages lie blank.

It's only because I think these streets are mine, that I hesitate. It's only because I fear if I share them, I can also lose them. You sit like a life raft steady at the surface and reach out your hand, but I see if I am to grab on, all the sludge around my ankles will follow, and once it's seen sunlight there's no going back.

I cannot pretend this tabula rasa forever. Set fire to the streets. Wait and see what survives the flames.)

November

(the sun is still shining
it's not the same as it shines in June
but it is there,
it is making the best of its circumstances
it's fighting for you when you need it
the least you can do
is see it
acknowledge it
and fight like hell in return.)

Quest

When you wake, the apartment is warm and the morning mild, winter sunshine trickling up the quiet street. The past day moves slowly like a hangover across your brow, but it's leaving, you know it, you can feel your chest lift in deep, clear breaths: you've made it through the storm. A broom rests at the corner of the bed, waiting for you to sweep away the debris and start anew.

The fire destroys, it burns and razes your fledgling shoots, but when you survey the damage, it turns out your core remained intact and what was lost in the blaze was the flurry of distraction, of fluff that never was going to get you where you were going, it was only low level brush. You didn't want to trudge around the forest floor.

You always meant to aim for the sky.

After math

(After the fire,
What remains crackles
And floats through the air
Its edges still bright orange
Burning
winding  slowly to the ground
And you
Singed
Numb next to them
Gray like ash
Looking for the seeds
To start anew)

Tally

At the end of the day, exhausted, you are washed ashore panting. Pull out a sheet of paper and run through the day's bookkeeping. Count the words in your story, nod. Count the miles under your feet, nod. Take a deep breath, dare to look at the other corner, dare to put your pen to the column on the other side of the line. See self doubt spread like a black cancer across your pages, see it eat your flesh and arch its brow at your tattered life. Hear it rifle through your paperwork and laugh at your juvenile delinquency. The disease smells your fear, feasts on it, envelopes you in dark smoke and begins to pull you under. Who do you think you are? You grapple at the few beams of light you can recall, mantras or songs you may repeat but you tumble quickly into the void and it would be so easy to simply let go (lord knows you've done it before, lord knows you've swam in the sunken place and let the cold water fill your lungs, it doesn't ever have the grace to kill you it only drowns you alive).

But you are determined now to look this monster in the eyes, to read its every ticker tape and watch its mouth create the words that aim to tear you apart; you are determined now to shine a flashlight at its gruesome face and see it was just a collection of sheets in the wind. You will collect them, fold them up, make your bed with them and sleep soundly. You will keep score and one day when you nod you will smile.

Reaper

A day stretches out ahead of you: sunny, solitary, free. A word processor lies at your fingertips, quiet, waiting. How you have longed for this moment. You sit in it for a minute, let the panic of inactivity and parched bank accounts twirl around you, it is November so the panic almost wins.

But a small tree grows inside your chest. It twists and turns and sprouts little shoots of hope and stories worth telling, it beats persistently in  your veins and rustles along your nerve endings. It looks frail still. You vow to water it until it grows stronger than your every fear.

Glycerine

It begins early, as soon as you wake up there's a rain cloud trying to beat its way into your chest and you're too tired to stop it though you know you ought to. It sets itself down on your left lung, breathes a heavy, sticky glue onto your organs and invites its friends. By lunch, there's a small party, by sundown it's a veritable rager and everything that could go wrong with your day, does. Your eyes blacken, your head swims, there's a mouse in the oven and all you do is lean over carefully and turn on the broiler. It's an analogy, and you know it.

Sit in the fiery silence of a Requiem, consider what other steps you could take, try to be the bigger person in a day that wants you belittled but come up short on how. Some days we must simply throw to the dustbin, feed to the wolves, better the day than you, better lose these precious hours than let your flesh decompose and disintegrate, tomorrow you will breathe easier again and there must be some potion can scrub the glue off your lungs, you will find it. Today is not the day to speak big words, today is the day to whisper soothing encouragement to your insides, swallow the last of the vodka, and move the fuck on.

A Requiem ends. It was not written for you.

In the Arms

The callouses on my fingertips harden, they've taken up the fight against the steel strings and I'm starting to think they may come out on top. The bar chords still win their escape. Last night I sat in the cold cellar of an old church and heard voices of the South beat the Lord into my lungs; it's hard not to believe music is salvation when it vibrates in your spine. Eventually the room fell away, eventually the audience disappeared, my body turned to lead and all that existed was a heart on fire, was knowing that everything is everything and everything is nothing, you thought of sage Jack in his delirium and he knew, he knew, and maybe there's a point to that as well.

We stepped out onto a 16th street that acted as if nothing was different, the Arctic winds raging up 3rd avenue and you thought everything is here, with gratitude swimming behind your eyes; you know there was a time before this when you were lost and you're sure there's a time after this when you won't remember what a smile feels like, but they're so distant now, they're so faint they can't touch you, when I woke this morning the room was an ice box but I smiled because everything is everything and as such so are you.

Signed

A ferocious cold front sweeps across the island and rattles leaves still green on their boughs. We spent a day retracing steps from years ago, when he was half as tall but just as thoughtful; it feels like a lifetime ago and you're not quite sure who you were then. You were happy, but what else? You tried then, too, but your throat was not lined up with the guillotine yet, and perhaps that's the trick.

I came home late, tired and restless, and began tearing at open drawers (I'm not sure if I mean literally), until it was 2 a.m. and music had beaten a smile into my step, my closet rearranged into its winter shroud. The window keeps shimmying down and letting floods of ice age air wash out my bed,  but the radiator hisses now and again, and this vodka keeps me warm, and I think I think I think I see light around the edges and I'll piece them together, I think I think I think I'll figure it out I'm not ready to lose just yet, I'm not ready to lose at all, I think this time I want the prize for myself and maybe I'll just fight till it's mine.

and Whistles

Late night in midtown, before the Tree arrives, after the tourists have returned to their berths and the avenue is unusually still, turn a corner and enter doors you've only seen from without. There's a familiarity in wires, in giant spotlights strung from soundproof ceilings, in buzzes of creative technology; there's a matted air around deadlined frenzy, and it comforts you. He turns a page and you read it a hundred times as fast as you can, trying to commit it to memory. Here are my sleeves, everything is on them. You zip up your jacket but make a note to try other routes. Soon, soon.

On the train home, that reliable F train carting me up and down this city at all hours and never asking any questions, a sudden sadness gripped me and I couldn't shake it while I lay shivering in bed. The heat came on, at last, the first violent sputtering of the season; it hissed in my eardrums as I fell asleep but could not drown out the cold fear in my chest. Anything but sunshine is darkness. Anything but perfection can just as well go to curbside collection.

You read your note, consider the map. Wonder if soon is now.

Re:Sent

(It's cold now, so cold and the days get dark so quickly, in an instant it turns. You feel the fear grip your chest. Every year, the same fear:

will I make it out alive?) 

Re:Set

But what has happened to your manic ramblings? What has happened to the lyrical dances that rushed through your head unasked and painted the inside of your eyelids in scintillating stories, coloring the world in words? How are the days passing you by in silence? 

A year comes to an end. 12 months ago, you shed the cloak of the straight and wide (again, again, you shed it a hundred times over but keep buying it again on layaway, paying for it with your freedom and praying this time it'll keep out the cold when it never did before), how new and possible it all felt then and now you can barely remember any other life than this.

Fall lands slowly on the steaming streets, leaves rustle into yellow and darkness moves in when you look away, it's so easy to sit blissful in a Brooklyn Heights bay window and I'm not sure why I wouldn't. You tell people you're a writer and gauge their reactions. You'd rather keep this secret to yourself: it is your treasure, not their object to inspect, turning it over in their hands and considering its worth. A year ago you walked out of a Manhattan office building in your business casual attire, nestled into a messy, dusty, fantastical tenement nook and did not look back.

Some days you may doubt, you may let the fear creep into your heart and silence your trembling voice, but no matter.

Wherever you go,
You always come home again.

Whirlwind

Rush out of work on a Friday night, afternoon sun dancing across Manhattan as you scale the bridge, impatience giggling in your limbs. Find a face so familiar it runs in your blood, and instantly any time apart is washed away with the emptied champagne flutes. Spend a weekend running through the city in magic laughter, seeing it again as if through the eyes of one who has loved and left, remembering to appreciate every step, every cobblestone, every unexpected gift the city gives you when you are deserving of it. The weekend is over much too soon, and you spend the last few hours pretending returns will be imminent, because the alternative is heart-wrenching.

Monday morning arrives with rain. Fall runs rampant, the year does not wait for you to catch up.

Lace your sneakers. Run like hell into it.

Paris in the Morning

You pushed a button
a small
unassuming
button
it's usually on anyways
but had come undone and you just
hadn't
noticed
you didn't think much of pushing it
again
but it clicked
the magic back into your
vision
the wonder back
into your
words
the irreproachable hubris
back into your
song
that leads you to believe
this is the right
path
and at the end
lies that elusive
Elysian
light
that you came here for

Ghost Town

Be in New York, love the fuck out of these streets, let their madness seep through you until you are blissfully run through with magic, and spend your days pouring out whatever poetry you can. 
Still work, work hard, but work with joy in your heart. The Universe will look out for you if you let it, will align itself if you set up the pieces. 

You have but one life. 
Let it be good.

Hold On

Unassuming street corners in Chelsea draw themselves into your quickly expanding map, as it fills out and embellishes itself in giggles and superlatives. You stand back and look at your oeuvre, tracing particularly sweet twists with your fingers, smiling. Stand in thrift store changing rooms and do not recognize the person looking back at you, and yet somehow you know her well. You like her. An actress comes to look at the empty room of your apartment and you think, why not take a chance, why not live a little?

The past writhes in shadows behind you; the New always looks particularly appealing, how pristine it is, how unsoiled by your dirty hands and inability to hold on to the gold as it sifts through your fingers. But on a rainy, humid, East Village afternoon, with your hair in wild curls around your head and the patient patience of 23rd street in your ears, your hands don't look clean, but they look strong. The gold lingers, glimmers across my chipping nail polish.

I'll be coming for your love, okay?
It's no better to be safe than sorry. 

A Rise

Crawl through the ashes at dusk, as the fire still smolders in embers under the hot coals, every step burns but you know you have to take it, know you have no choice but to make it through. A wise voice comes muddled through the ether; you try to see the words for the trees, will yourself to do better than usual. Begin to run and do not stop, pound the miles underneath your feet until they do not burn, do not drag you down and then return, this run does not flee. Watch the sun set in passionate hues behind the bridges, silhouetting Liberty and turning skyscrapers of downtown into a quiet wonderland. The view set everything straight, aligned the blood in my veins with the cool bones of my determination. I wrote more pages into the night, caressed them like children I had forgotten to appreciate. Sleep, when it came, was heavy, but not dead. 

Do not fail your dreams when they need you most, the note said. I pin it to my wall. Vow it was only a stumble. 

About Face

They trick you with the highs so you do not see the lows coming, flashing sleighted hands in your eyes and then it's too late to turn when the drop-off arrives. You shouldn't have been speeding, to begin with. I tumble down the rabbit hole, my sleeves tearing on rocks and the dirt scraping its way into my bare skin, I am helpless in the fall. What did you think you were doing and the demons all laugh at their newfound freedoms. How long they were locked away and how gleeful they are to make up for time lost. The sun shines a beautiful melancholy smile while I pull strips of flesh from my arms; the pain is temporary relief, at best, a lifetime in crutches at least. There's a veil between us where there should be but clear skies; I yell through the gauze but my voice comes out mute. I know at some point I was doing the right thing, this road looks the same as the one I walked then but the trees whisper their disapproval, the path grows darker as it goes.

A stone lies in my stomach. Reminds me of burdens I only pretended weren't there. The sun sets over smiling faces.

You wonder if your reprieve is over.

Digress

Sunshine, every day sunshine, you wake with a song in your chest and don't recognize your reflection in the mirror, don't recognize the summer in October. Your playlists trip over themselves dancing and the voices that normally would occupy themselves with yelling at your feeble attempts to live lost their direction in the melee. You forget to eat, forget to sleep and go to the dentist but remember to look at the Empire State Building every night and giggle your thank yous. Some sort of magic tumbles about your insides; still, your poetry lies silent and you don't know how to negotiate the trade. I walked through sleeping streets in the middle of the night and spoke a quiet while with the city; when no one else is there to interrupt us, we have such sweet words together.

I am still here. I'm only off on a scenic detour and it's throwing me off.

But what good is writing if you haven't seen anything worth telling the world about?

She Remembers

We sat on a grassy hill in the country and spoke of life, as children climbed apple trees and leaves tumbled to their deaths around us. Sometimes I get overwhelmed by how much there is to say that the words refuse to leave my lips, but in the late afternoon sun time seemed infinite and I forgot to worry.

There's a spot, after you've turned, past the stoplight and the street rises over the hill, where the city skyline floats into view and it rests just at the edge of your vision like a beacon, like a promise. I contemplated a childhood with that backdrop and it played out like a film. She said something about leaving the city because it beat her when she returned to it, but when we emerged from the tunnel and were spewed out onto 42nd Street with the mad air of New York in tornadoes around us, all I felt was a peaceful calm that followed me all the way home.

I saw the streets beneath your feet, the parking lots and train tracks and dreams with your footprints all over them, the map paints itself in words not spoken, a strange soundtrack plays over the speakers but the melody seems familiar. Fall seeps in through the crooked windows but in the warm sunlight I took off my jacket, I think there's a metaphor in there and I didn't forget to worry after all, I only realized I didn't need to.

Hamlet

Fall rolls in over the northeast, painting the trees in seasonally appropriate hues and setting the sun in the late afternoon. We drive out of the city in sunshine, navigate rolling hills and unchartered territories like it's inevitable. Your head roils with words but your pen lies abandoned, you wonder how to have it all while your foot sinks into the gas pedal. At night, your rooms lie pitch black and silent, it's a precious bubble.

You wait impatiently for the other shoe to drop.

Wonder what it might look like when it does.

Swerve

After midnight the late shift starts. The street is quiet for a short moment, you pour a glass and find the music that will pull the generations out of you. Allow it to pass over you, swirl alongside the alcohol and scratch its nails across the flimsy scars you've built to cover wounds that would not heal. It tugs at your heartstrings and sifts through the pools of blood to discover morsels of words about what it is to be what you are. A deadline looms, and you are never better than at the precipice.

A hundred and fifty years ago people made a great journey across the ocean and were never allowed to look back. You looked back so many times you eventually straddled the globe and never could rest.  Some days I think I am not lost anymore, that the tendrils turned to roots and I belong to the world, but I am only kidding myself. On a cool summer night of twilight until dawn, on a wide highway through the western deserts, when my language skips a track and I do not hear it, when I see that holding on to the roots in this soil means burning the ones that came before, I know that I am just as lost a child as ever, perpetually wandering the planet in search of a feeling that is no longer available to me. I sleep well, these days, I sleep fine, and you can't even tell I don't belong even when you look closely.

But I've been homeless for years and I don't know how to make it right.

Inte Ens Gå

Late nights at the Lincoln Center Plaza carry a magic all their own, like they put something in the fountain water to make it glow, like they put something in your step to make it hum I took deep breaths in the foyer like the air is lighter when the ceiling is high. I fell asleep with a smile on my lips and a fire in my chest, I glance at the deep end of the pool and see no good reason to not dive in.

When the alarm rings, all it tells me is to live. I nestle in to the messy corner where the magic resides and bathe in ink, in white sheets of paper colored with my own fevered dreams, I think if life ended tomorrow all I'd wish is that I'd put more of these words into the world and so when the alarm clock rings and tells me to live, this is exactly what it means.

81 and rising

Summer returns, it refuses somehow its death dances and sheds leaves like an anomaly against the backdrop of glistening foreheads and spiking ice cream sales. You complain into conversations but secretly bathe in the blissful sunshine, buying yourself additional days above the surface. The back of your head counts down minutes to reset; you don't recognize this soft, smiling dancer inside you but it's too easy to let her twirl around in her ignorance, you allow it. Tickets amass in piles around you, some yours, some not but the adventures all tickle you the same. She asks how everything's been like she's hoping for a rain cloud. You have none to offer.

You're not even sorry, now.

Is Well

It rains. You wake early, too early, and listen to it smatter against the upstairs balcony. Without glasses, all you see out the window is shades of gray across two boroughs. He says your name in his sleep, while you close your eyes and listen to breaths in tandem, drift in and out of dreams that do not linger.

It is everything and nothing at once. I sleep until the rain passes, but that isn't the part that matters.

F#m

The storm brews and gathers, it huffs and puffs itself into existence around you, feeding off the anxious scraps you shake like dandruff into the air. It follows your every step up Broadway, across the red lights, around the block as a strange heat wave pushes ahead of you, you don't hear what people are saying to you but your feet know the way without you.

At some point, when I was young, I began to sing. It started in my chest and curved around my hips, it vibrated out to my fingertips and electrified my hair, made the room swim. Hours, days, lifetimes were spent in that current and it kept the air in my lungs. I am older now, and there isn't much time, but some days, if I'm very quiet, the chords still strike my spine, still tingle the back of my head and I am lost to a melody that owns me.

I step out of the surf cleansed. Let the storm recede with the tide.

La Chaine

3:30 AM and a full moon floods your room; you do not sleep. You stare at countless conversations about the hells that twist and turn across the land, but you are none the wiser and your dreams when they come are muddled.

October is kind and sunny. For a short moment, there are no chinks in your armor, no flaws in your narrative. The days are weightless. But you see the darkness approaching your house, feel the pull of of the maelstrom circling an all-too familiar drain, you know the way this story is headed even as it is just smog in your periphery. A dusty typewriter stands in the corner of your room. You long for dirt under your fingernails and the smell of burning ink in your nostrils, want to tear the skin from your flesh and bleed into prose, you know what home is and it isn't happy but it holds you.

You know you are only pretending that this will be easy. The insight is unwanted, but here we are. Allow yourself to caress the keyboard. Allow the relapse. But I beg you not to drown.

the Free

Tuesday morning, mild sunshine, the birds make like it's spring and you don't blame them. Sit in Tompkins Square park where sleep children and bums alike, you adore its unapologetic dirt and beg it to infiltrate your lungs. You walk up and down Alphabet streets imagining windows where you might live, views you might have, I passed a school on Second Avenue and every smell from 1994 washed over my senses I knew exactly where I was and how it felt. Your father says he has no memories from when you were little, nor from when he was. You think you've spent an entire life weaving this tapestry to make up for his isolation but when the day comes you cannot save him.

I wanted to justify my existence
but what happened was
I created it.

And if I Could be

I wake at 5 a.m., cold from the open window. It is too early, but I toy with the idea of getting up while staring into the wall. The day will be beautiful, everyone says so, already it looks inviting. Wake again two hours later to mayhem in the west and wonder if everything is falling apart in these the end of days. If you were to die soon, what would you do with your remaining time, and you see not faces, not love, only words yet unwritten. You know what that means, even as you feign humanity.

You return to your room, ignore the sublime sunshine of a city in its prime. Write every story that tells itself to you. It is not time to die yet. There is too much left to say.

What Dreams Could You Have

Sunrise over Brooklyn, the apartment lies still and sleeping even when you no longer can. Watch the light dance across the broken bricks and burgeoning high rises, it's too early but you still step up smiling. Sit in the window reading stories that already live within you, wonder if they look different in this light. Four years ago on a Brooklyn rooftop every broken piece of my heart was mended and I still remember the feeling in my chest that day, and every day since. We looked at apartments and imagined furniture arrangements, the excitement of moving buzzed in your chest, the potential of Tomorrows. That we are never finished, but it doesn't mean we are over. Nothing turns out how you planned, but everything how you dreamed. 

I came back for you, and you let me. New York, honey, no one knows my name the way you do. 

(just)

Late night conversation, your head spins and you walk around in a daze, not just for lack of sleep. How does one do the right thing when all options on the table will hurt? Everybody bleeds at the end.

I fall asleep early, with a strange autumn wind piercing through the window. There's a storm brewing in your gut. It's too soon to guess now the fallout.

Say It Can Be

Late night playgrounds with the lights out, the swings move different under adult conversation. I had to stop for a minute to hear the words: they were not surprising, they were true. We walked past a street corner where a former literary character of mine had potentially lived, in an instant the entire book came flooding back over me. I missed her violently, first sweetly in recollection, then in mourning. She was packed away and abandoned, never to live in the imagination of another. The bitter taste in my mouth trickled out all morning in sticky aired Tompkins Square park during those magic hours when the bums own it again, the ragged, when I can relax. Anaïs Nin speaks to me in voices in the back of my head; she colors the fire escapes and sunsets, the burning sliver of new moon, I remember how it felt to always walk through her melodies and now I have since forgotten. Too much fire packed away, and for what?

I am angry with myself today. Maybe tomorrow I bring out the shears.

Cove

A quiet Sunday arrives when you are not looking. Your windows are closed so you sleep like dead, wake full of possibility and sunshine, it seems too simple but perhaps this is the respite you've earned, like the first day well after illness how everything seems lighter than you knew it before. She writes from the mountains, all northern light turmoil and emotion addiction, you haven't any advice worth its weight but your ears will remain on the line however long it takes. The streets swelter even as the leaves turn; you think it might be a metaphor and wonder if so, what for. You've been taught you can't have it all: were they wrong? I sat by the river one night and watched the lights go out on the Empire State, soon every street in this city will be washed with your name, I haven't the sense yet to stop it.

By sense I mean desire.

It is still summer and in summer there is no fear.

Baby Blue

Grand Central Station late on a Thursday packs up and winds down. The floor of the great hall quiet, a moment's rest before the commuting hoards return. We stood whispering in corners, stealing moments in transit while the city looked on, benevolent. Summer returns and you are caught unawares; they say if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. But you have known this city long enough to know that it doesn't follow rules, doesn't subscribe to convention. If the city wants to give you gifts, it will.

You've known the city long enough to know, that if it gives you gifts, you'll do best to take them.

The Hours

They speak
Your soul forgets to burn because your skin is already
on fire
We discuss periods at the ends of sentences like
weapons
but it's too soon for anything but
softness
sweetness
flower beds of caresses so your skin
smolders
in the tight seat
deaf to the poetry
deaf to the baptist church choir
deaf to anything but your own
beating
heart it says
yes
yes
yes
never mind the score
for once you think you'll let
it

The Choice is Yours

My fingertips burn with burgeoning calluses, steel strings still smarting from months of neglect. I forget how to make bar chords. I woke shortly before lunch with a start but reveled in familiarity; nights were made for writing, not mornings, your life was made for madness, not order. All afternoon, the blood in my body on fire, beating through my skin and falling out in words, spilling into sentences, I recognize the face in the paper mirror and hadn't remembered to long for her, thinking she was but a figment of my imagination.

For a dream, she feels terribly real.

Mused

Two a. m. trains on Sunday night run in a different plane, are inhabited by a different people. On the seven train into Manhattan they sleep on their way to work, on the four running local they sit quiet, disheveled, but comforting. How many nights have I walked these streets so late at night and always the city looks out for me, always the city keeps me safe, I write illegible scribbles in a notebook and lose stray pens in my hair. I do not want to sleep now, I want to keep speaking with the city until dawn because at last no one interrupts our conversation. The air is velvet, the cars quiet, at two a. m. the Empire State Building goes dark, I spent a summer in a Greenpoint window watching it sleep and here we are still wrapped in the same love story. It builds its momentum perpetually. 

Perhaps it never ends. 

Sunday

The story returns to you late at night, after you've exhausted every option for escape, after the quiet has dragged your fears from their hiding places deep in your chest and run them along your line of vision for hours, it seems cruel to punish before the reward but you'll take it, you'll take any sadistic tricks from the Universe for those pages to be written. You go to sleep with a smile on your face and wake ten pounds lighter at the memory, but every day starts the cycle anew. You sit in front of the blank page again and wonder what drives you to such madness.

The answer, of course, is that it was never up to you to begin with.

It is, in fact, the madness that drives you.

Glycerine

(You write poetry
because you cannot tell
stories
only bleed.)

Naive

The Great Novel evades me, slips through my fingers and taunts me at a distance. I tear out my hair to appease the gods, employ every tactic of procrastination in the book, hell I write that book sooner than this one, but to what avail. The street outside buzzes with life, summer returns for a sweet revival and the sidewalks are littered with tables. We drove to the ocean to look at it but the air was sticky and your wet feet unsatisfying (your body aches for complete immersion anytime it nears the sea), the seasons are changing, you know it is time to accept it. Virginia Woolf killed herself, all your heroes die but you think perhaps you want to live; it's a newfound idea, and you move it between your hands like putty. The vodka in your glass melts the ice, slowly, methodically, like the Arctic glaciers meet their demise now you watch eternity in its transparency. It's all sentences, one after another, but you are not sure yet your crime.

I rest my hands on the typewriter. It burns crumbles under my hopes, a pile of ashes at my fingertips.  Unto dust shalt thou return. But not now.

Not yet.

14&6

(Late nights
in Greenwich Village
still retain the same magic
now
as ever

It's a comfort.)

And Yet

(Your free minutes are few, and precious, and try as you might to spend them ticking off your to-do lists,  you find yourself with your head in the clouds and unwilling to come down.
A year from now what will you wish you had done today?
But you're not sure you'll have wanted to do this differently.)

Strangers Personal

I woke up late, too late, a dream lingering on my brow of bags that refused to be packed and the melancholy pull of departure. I had sat by an unfamiliar piano with Regina and ignored the changing tides, I wonder what it meant. I don't want to go anywhere. Later, by the river, my muscles were mute and refused to lift, I hallucinated stories of people jumping off roofs, it's that time of year again you know, it will pass, it will always pass it's just today I'm tired, just today. She sends pictures from a mountainous north, says maybe I live here now, you look in your medicine cabinet for a flashlight to keep the darkness at bay, every day follows the next: this is life. You've been given the option to leave, before. Your bags remain unpacked.

It's all right.

As You Are

A warm late summer sun shines, ignorant of the changing seasons and the chill of winds at night. You keep light clothes easily accessible, glancing at your sweaters in bemusement. It's a morning as sunny as many, many years ago, and that day barely makes the front page anymore: the earth revolves perpetually, it is a comforting fact. Time will pass whether you are ready for it to, or not; I bookmark foliage maps and will myself to accept the coming of the dark. Three years ago I crossed the ocean to watch my grandmother die before my eyes and the fall was beautiful then, too, it was warm, and still, and vibrant, and we sat in the sunny window reading poetry. I knew she was mostly elsewhere already, a tiny frail bird in oversized sweaters and hospital underwear, ready to return to her childhood north and she saw only my mother in my face. I stayed long past visiting hours while the nurses left food for me in the fridge that I could not will myself to eat. Late at night falling into the kitchens of my friends as they tended my wounds: I thought family is created, they did not falter.

The last day, I read our favorite poem, and the light in her eyes returned. She looked into my tear-soaked face, listened intently to every line and nodded. We both knew it was the last time we read these words together, but in every line lay the previous thousand times we had. In every last trill lay years upon years of laughter together. The last time I hugged my grandmother and told her I loved her was only one time of countless; maybe it was unique, but it was only confirmation of a love we no longer needed words for.

I still hear her laugh in mine sometimes. It is light, like the lemon curtains of her kitchen window, like the pink magnolia in her backyard, like the way she only ever wanted beauty and joy in the world, it dances to the ceiling. I still hear her laugh in mine.

And so she is not gone.

-

(you begin
to pack words
when you cross the river.
you know what it means
though you hesitate to say it
out loud.
a piece of home comes along.)

Musings

Key Foods on Avenue A is a sad place on weekday afternoons. Sad, you could say, or beautiful, or just true. The woman in front of you tells the cashier she is both a cat person and a baby person, even though people say you have to be one or the other. Another cashier yells at a man with only half his teeth to take the coupon flier from the front of the store, not from behind her register. The elderly are out in force, the decrepit, everything moves slower down the aisles than at night and you adore the scene. I have time for every delay. The sun shines like summer but the wind blows fall through your hair.

You see the waves approaching shore, feel them wash around your feet and rise to your kneecaps. You know you've only been on temporary leave, been offered a summer's reprieve to fill your lungs with air and soon the cold water will knock you down again, send you swirling into the maelstrom, turn everything you touch to rot.

But we are not there yet, you tell the woman at the checkout when she isn't paying attention. And maybe this time I'll know how to breathe underwater. 

to Palm

It rains in darkness; your closet is confused by the changing season and you wonder why you haven't mourned summer yet. (Everything races ahead regardless of if you remember to be sad or not.) Navigate the puddles with a laugh and make mental notes to invest in more appropriate attire, knowing full well it'll be years still before you commit. It always ends, eventually. I stare at his sculpture and marvel that magic flows out of human beings, out of nothing. How we can create worlds and leave someone else different than when they came. Later, in that soft red light, the music buzzing in your fingertips, how when he speaks of play you are exactly 15 years old again at a piano you knew like breathing, 7 and telling stories that never settled on paper but lived between your temples, 11 and painting micro cosmos as the hours while away underneath your thumb. It was a thousand miles away but returned at the turn of a phrase.

I woke with a weight on my forehead but that same feeling in my chest; sunshine returned to the island, summer lingers. There is nothing to mourn.

Through the Ceiling

Wake like a rock against gravity, dreams of pleading with dental experts that I've done everything right and still this destruction. But the alarm clock whispers words of freedom, of hours swirling ahead with nothing but creative dances in their path and you know the blooms are all yours for the picking. His voice rings in your ears not like a corral: like a wave. You read poetry and imagine every line is a gift.

It is.

Rattle

Heat roars across the avenues in a last desperate attempt at exerting power but it is futile: everyone has seen the forecast. We sit in union square park and giggle at the last round of sunscreen sand masks along our arms and ears, revel in that particular kind of tired you feel on a humid summer day, secure in the knowledge that the sun will not leave even when the seasons move on. It is the last day before laundry but I am unfazed; everything south of 14th street I own and you can't touch this, it is invincible. A poetry publication landed in my mailbox this morning and I long for the word like a lover; it sings in me as it approaches.

Count down hours, minutes until my eyes will rest only on you.

Diet Coke

The days do not wait for you to have time for them. They fill up and spill out all over the whirlwind in your head, the ache in your muscles. The train leaves on time and the rain begins on schedule, after the I do's have washed the bride's eyes all on their own. You reveled in the effortlessness of celebrations, of returning to familiar rivers with a new scent against your restlessness, it smelled of safety and adventure all at once, I slept for hours. We walked outside long after sunset to find that everything looked the same, but somehow you knew it wasn't. A cold wind blows across the avenues and takes summer as it goes.

You decide it doesn't mean anything at all.

Eleven

An anniversary comes and goes, eleven years of this skyline etched on the inside of your eyelids, I stood and looked on it from another shore but felt closer to it than ever. There wasn't time to celebrate, properly, like you like to do in your solitude, but at the end of the night, on the 4 train passing your first stop ever on 28th street it occurred to you that perhaps this was perfect. I landed in this city, again, early this morning and sprinted right into another day, Madison square park glorious and picturesque like a postcard, the back end of Chelsea dirty and real, Long Island city like a testament that there is much left to discover. It's September before I reach my bed, my dear morsel of space on a noisy street corner in Manhattan, the wind blows cold now but everything, everything in you beats warm, beats frantic.

Beats alive.

Eyes Red

A storm chases you out of the valley, but you sleep before the wheels are even up. Toss and turn across the country as it sleeps, and wake in time for metropolitan lights and effortless descent. The flight attendant turns on the lights, explains options. She pauses, and her conclusion wakes your every nerve, warms your cold, buried heart at last. You smile, greet the violet dawn with light steps and a heart on fire. 

And for those of you lucky enough to live here, welcome home. 

Summer

(When the night ends, you have a hundred mosquito bites on your legs. A water sprinkler carries on in the distance, but the little town in the valley lies quiet. You wonder how many more hours you could have stayed awake; there are weeks and months left of words to speak. 
Summer ends. But everything else is only beginning.)

35

...And that, of course, above all is what I wish for you. That you are still as madly in love with New York as ever, that it is still your epicenter even if it is not where you are, reading this letter... I hope you have figured out the alternative to the Svensson life you do not want. I hope, fervently, that you write, that you live your days in at least a bit of the creative mists you love so. I hope you fight your demons to the best of your abilities, and that you embrace them when you cannot. 

Something marvelous will happen with your life. I know it. It may not have happened this year, but one day it will, and I want you to spend every day earning it, every day preparing. Do something amazing. Above all, every day of my life, I hope you are doing what makes you happy - or trying to find out what that is. Respect the process, accept yourself. 

Make me proud. 
Happy Birthday. 

Why Not Take All

The room is dark, and cold, and quiet when I wake, far too late, but I sleep like in a vacuum. The sun rises over the mountains and turns the desert warm. I ran along the ledge, breathless as ever at the view but empty; I only want to go home. The twisted metal of familial wreckage sinks its teeth in my soft flesh and I cannot sew myself back together fast enough before it bleeds again. They ask questions but none of my answers are right; their disapproval sprinkles every meal. I go to bed full.

Long for hunger and the city's restless sleep again.

Full

(There is much to say, too much in this life to say, my heart swells in my chest with the immensity of it all. The American West spreads out around us in every direction; how small we are in it. But my mind wanders perpetually, finds itself considering a different color palette, and the words swirl through the air uncatchable. I stared at the Milky Way hoping for a sign but found only shooting stars with their promises of magic. 
The words will speak when it is time.)

Myself Dry

All day you're tired, staring into the bar and distracted by the slot machine music, it's like your brain won't settle, and nothing turns up right. But the desert air sinks into your veins, the kindness of strangers and the words whispered through tumbleweeds, you settle and see the magic through the dust. Tonight we drove out into complete darkness and when I opened my eyes, the entire Milky Way stretched out into infinity around us. I laughed and cried at the same time like it was the exact same thing and in that moment it was. A star shot across the expanse, you wished for all the gifts of the universe and felt already they had been given to you. He sends you music; it seeps into your spine. The hotel sheets are soft to the touch. You sleep like you never felt fear.

Stories unravel into the dark. You catch them like the river between your fingers.

Shoots

Sunrise over a quiet motel parking lot in the Nevada desert, you tie the shoe laces before your brain begins working and make your way to the back of the sleeping town. Start running at the edge of the trailer park with only mountains ahead. A little rabbit outruns you in an instant, the altitude beats its lack of oxygen into your lungs but the valley ahead carries you, the regular beat of your shoes against the dirt  road. He sends a picture of the city, and your heart swells in longing. It is a precious gift to have something to look forward to. 

By the time it is warm outside, we make ourselves at home in an old saloon that smells of cigarette ash in ancient carpet, that smells of slots played before noon and a world without windows, without time. I sink into a red leather armchair and let the words wash over me. They tell me their stories without prompt, build inside my chest and swirl around my tongue, I walked across America to bring the dark word and the only Word I had was wow. 

Wild

The room is dark, and cold, and quiet when you wake, how well you sleep in the west even as you miss the cacophony of your own street corner. The dogs pace around your bags as you load the car and you leave as the morning rush slows to a trickle. 21 years by each other's side and at last the Road lies ahead, open, unwavering, free. You look at him and laugh in a rush as mountains fly past, deserts, brush. The Wild West spreads out around you and it is all yours now, a gift that you give each other, that you give yourself and I am ready to take it now, I am ready to let the dry desert air rush through me and beat the madness to the surface, I am ready to leap from this mountain top and see where I land. He gave you the good book once and the entire world, you think perhaps the madness lay in you all along but he told you to look for it. My heart swelled with gratitude a hundred times over, remembering.

You are here, now. Embedded in the star trail, lulled in a silent vacuum and there is nothing else to do but explore what comes out of it. Ten years ago today I drove across the entire land and here I am flying down the road again, Jack lives on in me even as my skin gets old and my bones grow weary, because the fire that lives in your chest does not slow with age.

It will rage until you die, and all you have to do is let it.

Burrow

A new voice seeps into your blood stream. It rushes past your temples like a river, or like spring in the lilac trees. You do not sleep. When the alarm rings it is still dark and you have just the time to think fall before it evaporates. Splurge on a car and drive in silence across the bridge; see the old pasta factory careen into the gentrified metropolis, see the waterfront buildings burst forth like mushrooms. But then, over the back of an airplane wing, see steady, reliable Empire State Building weather the storm unyielding. I toss and turn; it remains. We walked past the old apartment at 28th and Lex and I thought, I have a history here. I have loved and lost and tended my roots; I, too, built something new on these streets and hoped I would one day become unyielding, inevitable. Turn the pages as I go and stack the years like notebooks on a shelf.

Wonder how they read, should somebody else pick them up.

Maybes

Manhattan lies still, dark, nowhere in particular to go and unperturbed. Some nights, the city will just let you be, let you wander aimlessly as you'd like and it will not bother you. The park staff did kick us out at midnight, but 42nd street breathed patiently and I don't know how many hours passed in its lungs. A silent alarm rang this morning and shook me out of a dreamless sleep, everything looks different in daylight.

But your blood boils, all the same.

No Alarms

The river looks different from this shore, gentle, blue, whispering secrets it knows but not you, not yet. You make a note to find out. Later, the air is warm but not imposing, a familiar wind from the west but entirely unknown, you lose your direction but do not feel lost. It's late and you are anything but tired.

Maybe this is how it starts.

This Perfect Pill

Open the flood gates, Manhattan swims in a flash the exact minutes you need to transit, and you arrive with your sneakers like inverted boats on the Hudson. Later, sit on the 42nd floor and watch the storm pummel the sky scrapers, watch lightning dance across the harbor and leave New Jersey in angelic sunset of peach and purple. I addict myself to the window like a drug, try to fill my veins with the lights from Financial District office windows, with the impossible nearness of Ellis Island refuge and the freedom of silence a thousand feet in the air. I walked home through blacked out downtown, through buzzing SoHo streets, through disheveled Bowery remains, and thought the country burns, yet we remain. I remain. The world eats at your guts, but the city feeds you.

I have been so tired, lately, so worn and lost. I stumble down wrong turns and crooked one-way streets to dead ends and haven't the time to gather myself and look at a map, but no matter. At every turn, when I falter, this city picks me up and guides me home; at every misstep, it kisses my bruises and covers my wounds. We sat on a fire escape on a quiet street in the West Village one sweltering summer evening and listened to Bach from the corner and I thought everything is magic; New York was old to me then but it's far older now, it has etched itself into my muscle memory and fastened its vines around my every joint, it sits in my wrinkles and buzzes in my hair, I no longer know where I end and it begins.

And that was all I ever really wanted, after all.

Feed

The air is heavy, breathes like cotton, the trains run slow like they feel it. The news continue to pummel your senses, everyone's senses, it's a relentless spin cycle and there's too much detergent in your eyes. I looked into their unknowing, happy faces and tried to remember that there is still joy in sunshine. Reminded him only to really remind myself.

Forest Hills smells like suburbia. It smells like SuperTarget and pear lotion and taking the car. It smells like air freshener in a home without soul, and you want none of it. Take a late train home to the island and breathe easier on its shores. I sat alone in the last train car through midtown and have never felt less lonely. This city holds me, knows me, sees me, and I am all the better for me.

He asked me when I would come home. But I don't understand the question.

In Circles

My clothes smell like the sea, salty, eternal, the waves were wild today and I almost lost my swim suit I almost lost my self for a moment and it didn't bother me in the least. My skin is sanded soft, my cheeks are flushed but it may just be a memory of breathless seconds stolen before you'd washed the sand out of your hair, something about that belt buckle in your jeans won't leave me although maybe it was a trick of the lights and it doesn't actually feel at all. Summer pulls at me, it tells me I have no others musts, no other dreams or desires beyond staring at this sunset every damn night and whispering into the New York night how much I adore it. I sit down late at night, when all is dark and quiet and stare at my word processor in silence, it's a duel and I'm losing. The story is silent when the days are so loud.

It occurs to me maybe I should be listening, instead. Let the magic
in.

11:11

You let it get to your head, the days, the freedom, the way the hideous glass monoliths of Williamsburg sing at sunset. There's a swing in your step that you can't shake but you assume you must be deluded somehow, it couldn't possibly be this unbearably light to be. A baby fell asleep in my arms today and I thought, that seems about right. It's August already, summer will be over soon, your youth will be over soon but you're shedding layer after layer of dust and other people's expectations on you it makes you younger than a chemical peel.

You wish all the time that you knew then what you know now.

But you know it now.

Start there.

in Reverse

All day I am tired, but come midnight sleep is elsewhere. But it's not the flood of strangers' eyes, it's not the voices of past ghosts reiterating their same lies into your bloodstream, it's not the sweltering air outside your window.

I think it's just life making itself known again. It waits till the streets are quiet, and then it speaks.

Have you listened to yours, lately?

Escapology

You pack your bag, prepare for a day, for easy, breezy, for Summer Mondays but something in your gut gnaws at you; you know it, you've seen it before, it rolls across your brow and pulls at your reins. It closes the door and puts you back in the corner, writes a to-do list and and dresses your soft brown skin in so much cloth. Sit in the window and wait for the thunder to roar in. 

Wonder what will be left when the rain washes your summer away. 

Privilege

The way he says snowflake grates at your spine but the way he breathes on your neck wipes the words from your brain so the night is a draw. You wait for hunger but it doesn't appear, so instead you try to fill the space with sentences; they are trite, but they live. Black clouds bubble in the back of your mind, you see them try to build and swat them away like insufferable pests. The humidity lays rivulets along your skin, the summer night whispers lewd ideas into your head, what else can you say?

Say yes.

Hold Up

Body weighs a thousand pounds in the mattress, morning sunshine so bright and your head yells seize the day but you can't even lift it from the plush dream. Everything swelters already. Drown your closed eyes in coffee, relish the endless free hours ahead. A night in the alphabet still swims in your head; she calls from packing, asking how to fit life into 2 suitcases and you think is there any other way to start over? You know so well her week-of panic. You adored it, for years, for generations of moving the blood in your veins and reveling in departure, in separation, in heart ache the only way to know you lived. You think now you may never feel it again.

On this mattress you learned to stay and still survive.

Afters

Wake up early, too early, the street still sleeping and a sort of hang over drying on your lips. I dreamed something otherworldly; remembering it's just another work day seemed a cruel sort of blow to a soul that was busy flying. Send electronic apologies for my manic rambles, but the truth is I'm not sorry. I'm so done being sorry, so done thinking I'm sorry when I'm actually happy, so done thinking I'm failing that my savings account is low or my Instagram account is flawed when I'm actually busy squeezing the most juice out of this short life I possibly can; I doubt, so often I doubt, so often I think I created this ambition to have something to hold on to that wasn't square because someone once told me that square is lame but it's not true, that's not it at all, it's because once you've felt the way your love fills your gut and expands your chest and swims behind your eyelids it's all you ever want to feel and maybe that's a drug like any other but fuck it. If this drug kills me, at least it let me live.

Slam

The line curves around the block, alphabet city so close to home now you breathe the streets like their fire is yours to spit. Crowd into the small space that feels like you've known it forever and maybe you have. They stand on this tiny stage and set everything ablaze, they paint the night in colors you forgot you already knew, New York swerves and dances inside your chest like it owns you, and it owns you, you always knew but now you know, she says thank you that we went, no I mean thank you like it was a gift and I think this gift wasn't gingerly unwrapped it exploded in your hands like a grenade my whole body shivering and it can't be just that their AC was set too low.
Walk home into numbered avenues and everything tingles, my body feels different and I run my long nails hard against my skin just to know the outline, just to place this entity back on the ground, back on the streets, I cried five times already and I can't meet the man with the twinkling eyes because I fear I may consume him my borders aren't solid enough yet. I forget where I end and the city begins. On the street corner by my apartment a man lies unconscious in the street and his friends try to cover for him yelling insults at each other and there must be a reason they're not involving the cops. All week I worked, I worked till I forgot how to stand, I'm so hungry, but I know now the answer lies not in a filling diet but in magic, I need no food, no sleep, I am invincible, did you know this was the secret all along because I think I did but I forgot my prescription lenses to see the good word how it was written. Monsoon rains wash the avenue, wipe the slate clean, I will slit these wrists just to see how they bleed and when they throw bleach on the pavement come morning I'll be long gone anyway my blood is in the East River now
I ain't never coming down.

underneath

Race through the days, you become the person who eats lunch on the 7th avenue local train and packs your bag for a handful of adventures at a time. Evening is perfect and cool, and you laugh in his eyes without being sure why. You haven't the time to think about it.

At home the word processor lies waiting, begging for attention. It's late, too late, you're drunk and delusional and the alarm clock is already warming up its siren song but no matter, you promised today you would write, so you do.

The race only serves to distract you from your purpose, but no matter. When you sit in stillness, midnight long since past and not a wave of tired in your bones, the noise falls away and the purpose is clear.

Did you put ink to paper today?
OK.

Rain days

I sat for a short while,
in a TriBeCa window,
between two shifts and
unslept,
out of place with the Chambers Street suits
having their expensive lunches
around me,

and all I felt
was free.

Bleed

Then one day it comes to you. You spend all day circling it, slaving over hot stoves (the weather doesn't call for it, but you're trying to scare out the mouse that lives within), singing other songs and other stories, feeling it bubble within but not quite ready yet. I sat down late at the typewriter, and it whispered things I should already know but was glad to hear again, and when the cursor began blinking, a whole other world appeared.

So many days pass when you do not feel the magic in your veins, when the words you write are dusty and common and you begin to doubt you were ever meant to put any ink into the world, but one night in revelry erases every such thought from your nerves. Anything seems possible, you want to never sleep, or eat, or waste time on meaningless worldliness. All you ever want is to sit in silence, in this cramped corner in this messy room, and listen to a story that paints itself inside your eyelids. It's a story that no one knows and no one sees but you. It is your little secret.

Until you tell it.

Notes

New York is the world's largest orphanage. We come here in search of being told we are good just the way we are. We are looking for a forever home. 

Clinton Hill

I moved to Brooklyn. I packed a little backpack and got on a bus at MetroTech, I didn't know the streets but they felt old, like they knew me. Climbed the stairs and found the key hidden in the compost (not in the compost, under the compost). The dog is blind, but she hears you come in and retreats to a corner to sulk. You are not who she hoped you would be.

I can commiserate.

Empty the wine bottle slowly and your ego quickly. Uselessness looks the same on both sides of the East River. I have to tell the dog when to step up and down curbs. The hasidic kids laugh, but it's mostly summer and freedom bubbling to the surface.

Everything looks different.

It feels exactly the same.

Still

For hours I sit in front of the screen. It stares at me in return, mocking my empty attempts at speaking to it. Stories fall by the wayside, they blow out the window and scatter on the scorching street below. My bright summer nail polish chips in scorn. She writes from across the water to question everything; I question it back, and the emptiness bounces between us. There's a suntan line where your fingers used to rest; it means nothing. He had such piercing blue eyes, but I cannot hear the story in his kiss so perhaps there isn't one. My hearing isn't the best, but my blood is an excellent judge of character.

The mouse returns. He skitters across my bedroom floor without shame. I've been sitting here with my feet on the desk for hours, you can't blame him for thinking the world is his oyster. I set another trap.

But I'm less sure now it'll catch anything.

Roach

It's an early evening at the bar; you haven't been there since the time you all piled into the back of a cab simply to ride three blocks through the Rainbow march, but this kind of bar never changes. She already knows the bartender, he refills your glasses on the sly every time he passes and you just giggle in return. Complain about how the stranger droned on about himself but then proceed to do the same yourself, an inevitable game of passing it forward. You vow to do better, as the New York night steams around you. There's a dance party in Washington Square Park, you love the city to no end.

The summer is still wild in its prime, steaming streets and Instagrammable adventures. In a small corner in the East Village, my tan fades and forgets itself. 

The story that grows in its wake will be worth it in the end. 

It Better Last

New York drowns in its temperatures. I know I mention the weather too much but it's so hard not to. Walk these same paths as always. The waitress is new but the drinks taste the same: everything is different, somehow. I long for the storm. Surely it'll come soon. The plants on my window sill are screaming for a change.

I found the story again today, I feared it was long gone and my cavorting around the Old World had erased it from my heart, but it had not. I know who I am only through words, and it turns out to be the only thing that matters. An alarm clock lies in wait, but it cannot touch me. I looked around me. And it turned out I was free.

Advisory

The heat remains. It licks the island like a bumbling puppy unaware of its size and drenches the streets in a heavy, warm, wet blanket. I try to acclimate but end up standing in the grocery store's freezer for much longer than is environmentally conscious.

Another singer of our tormented youth dies, hangs himself in his beautiful home and leaves everyone else back at the beginning of the grieving process. You spent so many years teaching yourself it was no longer an option, only to be proven wrong by those you've leaned on. You wonder what you're supposed to learn now. Your music streaming service is quick to suggest the appropriate playlist, but you turn off the sounds, close the door. Open the word processor and focus.

The only thing that will get you out alive is keeping your shoulder to the wheel. It's not a pretty life, but it is your only one. If the darkness wants to catch me, it'll have to run like hell to keep up.

To Tell Them To

4 a.m. and New York City lies quiet. The street corner is dark, a dark I haven't seen in weeks. I sit in the window, unable to sleep, and my head keeps whispering Home, home, home. I forget I have ever been anywhere else, that I have ever wanted to.

Later, on the subway, seeing again people of every skin, of every way, I realized my center of gravity had sunk into the ground, my breaths slowed. Like I had been untethered, like I had been drifting off into space for a while but had returned to dock now. Home, home home. A heat wave rolls across the avenues, it makes pearls of sweat roll down my neck, but it can't touch me. Nothing can.

On these steaming, dirty, noisy, impossible streets, I am invincible.

Behind

Wake early, the slightest tinge of hangover across my brow. Pack the last of the things strewn across an apartment that isn't yours, run out of money on your public transit card, everything says it's time to go and you arrive early for the airport shuttle, early for check in, early at the gate. The flight is late and you upend yourself in an airport lounge, playing games on your phone to avoid hearing the voices within speak. It is time for them now. It is time for all the drifting mayhem to wrap itself neatly along your spine and make you whoever it is you are going to be. Playtime ended when you passed security, and now there is only the rest of your life left. You wonder what it's like to not spend every moment considering every thing, to not always be questions, or not always be exploding in emotion.

But you are not sure you'd like to find out.

Blank Page

The last days race past. There is no keeping up. She dons a white veil and a silly smile; the park is all sunshine and peak summer. We prance around with secrets and surprises, and the night ends no later than could be expected from a group of middle aged women with children who'll wake them in the morning. I say I have to pack. Stockholm is still light when we get into the taxi. I don't quite know what I'll be without it.

My body prepares for flight, for the other. My tongue rearranges itself in my mouth, I feel the muscles around my spine tense and perk up. Now is the time to put these jagged pieces together. What did you learn? Who will you be?

Same, same.

But different.

Pollenchock och Stjärnfall

Another train races across the heartland. The evening sun sits high in the sky. It casts long shadows across fields on fire. The last few days swim through my head like a sweet dream, my chest expands in gratitude; it overwhelms me but I want it to. At the end of the day, today, when the train was waiting and it was time to go, I ran back down the side of the cliff -- warm, smooth cliffs, eons of reliable -- and jumped back in the water for one last dive. I dipped my head and let all the sounds fall away, opened my mouth to let salt water stream through my gills. I arrived at the train station with white eye brows and brown shoulders, the smell of the sea in my hair. They asked me if I'd ever come back but I'm not sure the answer matters.

I am here now. Something will come of that, alone.

Since You

The monster came back today, reared its ugly gnashing teeth and tore through my insides. I sat in an armchair in her living room (you know the one, from IKEA that I always liked, I'd make you stop and sit in it with me on the show room floor) and tried to keep from tears while my hands shook uncontrollably. There were no drugs, no drinks, no magical potions to soothe the burning tide, but we packed our bags. The tram came up behind us and we ran to catch it. When we slowed for the last stop, I smiled.

A hundred times I've walked that path, a thousand. It curves around a cliff, bores into a bit of grass and then you're at the top, with nothing but open sea and sail boats and sunshine in your lungs. I ran down to the water's edge, let my shoulder rest against sun-warmed, smooth rock. We took our clothes off instantly, she said the water was cold but I knew it would be perfect. Two steps and you're in.

The ocean is salty, real salt water between my teeth, I feel my skin crackle and my eyebrows turn white. Seaweed between my toes. Dive under the surf and everything is quiet, everything is clear. The body adjusts to the cool temperatures; it comes alive. I laughed and told her nothing had made me this happy in a long time and it wasn't untrue. The monster curls its tail and retreats to the last dark corner in the back of my spine. Not gone. But not stronger than the pull of the tide in my flesh.

Another Little Piece

The weather comes and goes; there's a constant addition and removal of clothing, you cannot count on anything and that's reassuring. I zig-zag across the country to people who have known me longer than I've known myself: some of them understand my dizzy madness, for some it is too alien, and intimidating. It unnerves them to see me wrangle the mold. My bags are full of keys; I sit in an empty living room crying, in an apartment twice the size of my own, and know now beyond a doubt what I must do.

I walked past your house this morning and didn't feel a thing. I've been doing that a lot lately -- feeling nothing. It comes as a bit of a relief.

There's a fine line between being untethered and being free. But life is short, and dire, and impossibly beautiful.

I can't stay on the ground, if there's a chance that I could fly.

of Sun

The sun doesn't set, the nights don't get dark. I lose track of time in the permanent twilight that is for sleeping, all I want is to be out in it. Do you remember how we'd spend entire summers in that space? Perhaps we were drugged by youth but I still think the magic is out there. There's a bed waiting for you in every home; they build their houses, drive their cars, return to the safe ground from which they came but they make room for you in it.

But I never wanted the safe space.
All I ever wanted was magic.

Around Me

The rain comes and goes; it is never entirely absent, never entirely out of view. Bodies, skin tones, hair colors and cuts of cloth you recognize from forever envelope you. Are you one and the same?

The bus cuts through downtown on a quiet Monday night and all is quiet (it's always quiet), the rain doesn't bother anyone but me. I went to check on you and you are well; I'm glad. There's an ease in your step I'm grateful to see. I like to think there's one in mine, too, but I can't be sure.

It's so hard to know who you are when the world around you would rather say what it wishes you could be.

And I'm Home

White dress, flowers in her hair, the rain holds off until it becomes merely a fun story for later years, you see lightning in the clouds over Tuscan mountains when everyone else is sleeping. There is food, and wine, and stories of days Before.

Later, when the stone house is quiet, the night black, you lie awake counting mosquitoes and trying to make sense of a life that will not be made sense of. Only a few hours remain until the party begins again, you treasure the moments of solitude when you may digest. And so, perhaps, it goes for life. You'll stitch the pieces together in time.

Your own.

Under the Tuscan Sun

The day revolves in sunshine. Sit on a rock and watch the Mediterranean rage, it soothes you. Practice speeches in the mirror, as your shoulders turn brown with summer. A language slowly builds on your tongue; home is thousands of miles away (literally too). This room alone must be bigger than how you live normally, she says and she isn't wrong. The closet space alone is daunting. 

I could walk for hours with this cool, soft grass underneath my bare feet. My heart beats so loudly in my chest on this hard bed. I don't know yet what it means. 

Perhaps it's nothing at all. 

Leaning

Another night of upturned lag, you nap in the short space where it's dark outside then twiddle your thumbs until it's time to go. Walk through a quiet capital in the middle of the night but it's already dawn, the boats lie still in the water but how light it is. Sit on a sleeping bus as the sun rises over a town that was always beautiful in summer, always beautiful in the hours when you didn't need share it. The flight is late but you arrive to familiar faces behind the ropes, what treasure. Rearrange your languages but it all comes up French, there's an old castle at the edge of town where you live now, at night the whole place creaks and you know something is haunted. You're certain the ghosts will be friendly.

A wind blows through the magnolias, sweeps little clouds across the crescent moon. You haven't slept in days. Will the Tuscan night to whispers secrets into your dreams. Pray this will still be real, tomorrow.

Elsewhere

Arrive in the early morning, air is cool but the first commuters are already on their way; you squeeze your big bag and unseasonable tan into their unwelcoming gazes. There's not enough warm clothes in that suitcase. Tumble around in jet lag and get confused by midnight sun, repack your bags into impossibly small proportions and set the alarm. Three hours if you fall asleep now, but you will not. I ran along the water this morning but nothing made sense. The flowers are beautiful, the still air, the city you once knew.


It no longer knows you.

You're not sure what to tell it.

Rainbow Bright

Check off the to-do list, one last run along the river and throw out the milk before it goes bad in your absence. I drag perpetually heavy bags into the underground and squeeze into a crowded subway car, my cheek leaning awkwardly against the glittery arm of a drag queen. We get off the train at the same spot in the west village, the rainbow flags all emerging above ground and me schlepping the bags to another train northward. I get in late and run through the tunnels, arrive sweating on a train that races into the countryside, all moody clouds and waving reeds. I stare at the skyline and try not to cry. It's a day for joy and celebration, for love and confetti, for the great freedom of a new horizon but I feel none of that.

Beautiful days only remind me I miss you. The forecast says rain everywhere I'm going now. I am grateful for the reprieve.

If only I had packed a jacket.

Brooklyn Inn

A flight is canceled, they come back in tatters but at least you get a few more hours in their company. It's a strange sort of existence. You try to teach his young eyes about Washington Square Park squirrels and the magic underneath his feet; he practices high fives with unknown hands. It is the same thing. Later, along that polished dark wood, try to read the palms of a stranger, see how their old eyes fit into yours. You're not sure you're wearing the right glasses.

The summer evening is perfect, I took too many pills today I know but everything is falling apart at the seams and I don't have time just now. I check in online. Choose a window seat near the very back. If you hold on for just a little longer none of this will mean anything. Set the alarms. Take me home or take me anywhere.

At the Same Time, I Don't

It's fine, it's fine, a belly full of snakes, it's fine, don't forget [how] to breathe. Just a few months ago you lived on a tour bus and didn't know fear. It's easy to forget your highs when you keep getting shoved into the lows. Fill the hours with mindless input until a friendly face appears at your side and calms your fevered forehead for a while. You still go to bed with ghouls, the cool air of the machine at your pillow does nothing to dissuade them. I keep waking at dawn, unable to sleep. If I were across the sea now the sun would never set and we'd sing that inevitable melancholy as we do.

The chaos of the room leaves way for a gentle exodus. Erase your scent from this space. Let someone else tear through it for a bit. You can only be cut so many times before your blood gives up the will to coagulate. My suitcase fills up. My hair is being pulled by the stars again. 

Overs, Pt II

New seasons, new voices in your phone, scrub out the old by potting a new plant on top of it, and hope you won't notice the crooked seam at the edge. Build a smile and hope it holds up to scrutiny.  We put our air conditioning behemoths in the window last night and prayed they'd levitate. It's the same thing every year.

She doesn't ask about you. I don't know if they've already forgotten, perhaps they never learned to remember. I'm not sure it matters -- I remember enough for a hundred seasons. It sits in my gut and whittles my bones. A year ago we slow danced in the street but even the streets have moved on. They look so different even when they carry the same names and in Greenpoint they're building a high rise.  We sat in the sandy bar and let the bartender pour us tiki drink overspill until it cooled down outside.

The plants in my window are thriving. They're looking for something to hold on to.

I'm already packing my bags.

Kashmir

Helter swelter, your skin dissolves against the pavement and everything swims. Monday morning slaps you upside the head as the To Do list wraps its innumerable arms around you. Your obligations suffocate you but your bank account dwindles. Somehow the balance seems frail.

In a second, the sky turns black. Thunder smacks across the borough and a monsoon drenches the tourists on Second Avenue. Sit in the window and watch the mayhem. Feel the temperature slowly descend. Bring out a large suitcase from the top of the closet. All things go, all things go.

So often you are too wrapped up in self-loathing to remember gratitude. We are alive. It is summer. The ticket lies waiting and the Word remains at our side. Magic runs rampant. Bring out your nets. Let's catch some.

Black

Light the candles, sing the song, another year goes by and the frosting holds up despite the humidity. Swipe right to prove to yourself you have some humanity left, although most of it sifts through your fingers like sand. Put this away till morning. No good comes of speaking into the void on a Friday night with a half drunk bottle of wine on the floor. The sunburn itches on my thigh.

This'll all look different in the morning.

Paint It

The temperature drops 30 degrees overnight, you wake with a chill and smile. A cool breeze lifted me along the east river promenade for miles and miles and I laughed the whole way.

Someone asked me the other day how long I've lived here and I realized the real answer was long enough. Long enough to walk its streets with my back straight, long enough to look people in the eye, long enough to belong. I spent so many years tumbling around anytime the wind caught me, lifted and landing with no control of my wanderings. Maybe I'm not done walking the earth yet, but my feet no longer leave the ground at every gust. For all the things I do not have, I do have this, and it is worth everything.

95.7

The heat wave lingers. It rolled its fat, slow front like a tongue across the city and stayed there, pushing beads of sweat from every inch of your skin. The AC in your closet rests as you test your endurance. Everything slows, every movement, the thick blood in your veins, everything except the fingers that run across your keyboard, mad with visions they're terrified to forget before committing them to paper. A sunburn itches at the small of my back, but it's no metaphor.

I'm doing the things I said I would do.

It keeps feeling like home.

West

The morning begins with a jolt, soon you're in an uptown waiting room calming a terrified face and hoping for good news. The sun is warm again and Queensborough Bridge is teeming with excitement: summer Friday. Pack your bag and move westward, back into that nook you know with your eyes closed, how nothing feels as much like home as this. One day this place will belong to someone else. Perhaps it will be yours, perpetually.

The weekend steams. People evaporate out of their apartments, the tiny morsels of green space filling up in an instant. I ran along familiar piers, to familiar views, but everything felt a hundred miles away underneath my pounding steps. A slow downward spiral circles your spine but you decide to cut it off before it speaks.

I haven't time for a slow descent into madness just now. It is summer.

I know I'll get to it eventually.

Roll

Take a late morning train, middle of the week and none of the well to-dos are on their way yet, you have the row to yourself. Watch Long Island rush past your window in increasingly thick greenery, a gentle reminder how rarely you the the wild anymore. Dark brown wooden shingles rule, the sun comes out and tans increase the further east you go. Smell the salt water, see the dunes rise like waves cresting on either side. They pick you up all smiles and you think the air is a little lighter out here. Stare at a blue horizon with nothing in it until Europe.

The night is cold, but completely quiet. A full moon rises over the water. Your bed is full of pillows and whispers to you of a hundred years' sleep in its folds. You let the night reassemble your pieces. Let the rolling sand make you whole.

Score

Another day of rain, it lies like a heavy fog at the top of 1st avenue and below 14th street drizzles in every direction. I rife through drawers and bathroom cupboards for escape pods, but they offer little outside of a coating of cotton around my nerve cells. Pack a bag for summer escape but bring your warm clothes, wonder what it is you're trying to prove. He tells you about undergraduate poets and your laugh gets stuck in your throat; perhaps you haven't graduated, yourself.

The days race ahead without reprieve. You wonder if you'll make it to the end.

Diamonds and Rust

Late night texts, some dull knives that pretend caresses, other fluttering fingertips that pretend comfortable familiarity. You stare out the window and try to comprehend what you might want to send in return, but it's all ants in your belly again and you wish the liquor bottle on your windowsill wasn't quite so empty. Today, 8 years ago, I moved back to New York, my second time around and this time it would be for real, it would be the one true love to last forever. Two years later I landed on old, familiar shores with my heart broken in my hand, the remains of my possessions in a torn shopping bag, and I thought that I would never be happy again.

The day passed in useless inertia, in circles of self-abuse and uselessness, but perhaps this is the price I pay for the ticket. Perhaps this is the blood sacrifice to get to that space where the story speaks in my stead.
If it will get me there, I bleed willingly. If it will return to me, whisper to me its secrets, I will bleed myself dry. I will tear at my insides until they are all clawed out, I will scream at the walls until the paint peels off.
Don't you see?
I will kill myself just to live.