7th and Hartford

Los Angeles of 50 degrees but palm trees still, a retro aqua tour bus stands parked on  an abandoned street in downtown. Your cab driver says it's like a bite size Manhattan and you think if he ever went east it would eat him alive. The audience members line up politely after the show. You changed my life and I just wanted you to know. Raid the green room of its treasures. Everyone wants a piece of something. Curl up in a bunk bed, fall asleep before takeoff. Tomorrow when you wake you'll be miles away.

Riot Gear

One day until departure. The afternoon was warm, again, rife with potential, and when the thunderstorm pummeled the city it seemed merely appropriate. I made it home with seconds to spare. How New Yorkers magically reappear with the sunlight; where are they all winter? I'm still here.

I listened to your songs today, it's been so long. They look the same from the outside but something sounds different now, they grate at my ear drum. I've begun cutting shapes into my skin again, trying to release the ghosts within but they refuse to leave, how comfortable they are! My face is tired in the mirror, sallow. I seem merely a shell, keeping up appearances but full of shards inside, brittle and breaking without pause. Perhaps in time we'll all grind back into grains of sand, wash up on the same shore and lie still.

But it's nothing to wait for.

Remission

For a fake Chinese rubber plant. 

Wake with the window open, sounds of Second avenue drifting lazily on the spring breeze. How could you be so lucky to receive this respite when it should still be winter. Your skin feels different, your blood. Drink coffee on the fire escape, try to take breaths deep enough to reach the dead corners of your psyche, shake them out of it, demand it's not too late, scream into the void.

I read old stories today, my own words circling back to me of dark Stockholm winters, of gut-wrenching heartache and the painful tingles of spring, of road trip soundtracks and the dream of having New York safely tucked in my pocket. How many years it's been of this rollercoaster, hurricanes of feelings but as soon as you force a break into it, how monotonous and tiresome life seems. Age softens you, and as you are reminded your passion it feels oddly far away. Vow to set yourself on fire again.

Bring the word.
Leave the rest to the flames.

Pike

For an entire day, you write. Stories unfold before you faster than you can jot them down and you rejoice in the vivid imagination of your characters; how they give themselves to you. You put on more coffee, pour another glass of wine, try to keep up. Take breaks to read the words of others and realize how their magic doesn't lessen yours but waters it so it grows. No day was wasted in creativity. I went for a run along the water in the afternoon sun and thought how beautiful the world, when the wind doesn't bite through your skin. Little bulb buds begin to peek out from the cold earth. Soon it will all be over.

There's something about coming out of a depressive relapse that reminds me of those first days after you've gotten over the flu. Suddenly, you feel the wellness of your body, feel each limb stretch in the sunlight and remember gratitude over its normalcy, how clear your head feels, how hopeful life. I reveled in it today as I watched the sun set over the town that I love. My muscles move, my lips smile, my mind tells stories as though it knows it was meant to.

I have never been so well,
nor the world so sweet.

Crumb

Ice rain, late morning, the dog looks like a bad day and you have to face so many West Village dog owners with their perky Sunday morning jokes. You're not even wearing clothes under that parka. Slush climbs past the lip of your boots and freezes your skin, your bones, but something in your chest shatters like an icicle.

You know it is the time of year, you know it is the dark and the cold and the way earth lies dead, waiting. You see years and years of winter pages crying ink pleading for it to be over. You know by heart to count down the weeks, days, hours until sunlight returns, until you can remove the heavy, wet cloak from over you and breathe again, your spine reminds you to hold on, hold out, just a little longer and claw your way forward, not give in, not let the soil bury you, not give up even when it seems like such a welcome relief and a better option than staying alive (if that is what this is). You dig your nails into your skin to feel your place in the world still. This is you now.

Pray it is not you, later.

Anondyne

Pack your bag, your weekend bag, the little one, it sends a breezy message, it feels like a small thrill, and you'll take every break you can get. Walk halfway across the island to where the streets turn crooked, you know them like the back of your hand. Turn the sound off on your phone, you don't want to know what it's saying. A mess of white fur wraps itself around you, bottles of wine open, hours disappear in an alternate world you know as home. A full moon travels across the Village, everything lies quiet.

You hang on by a thin thread.

But you hang on.

Your Nerve

(You thumb through the pages 
rifle through them
tearing desperately at anything that can remind you
lessons already learned 
and all you know 
is the Word likes you better
in anguish.)

Don't Say Something

What does it look like? She says. Cold spring afternoon, the window faces a casino in the harbor, sea gulls in from the sea and I always find myself looking at the dust gathered around the crown moulding in the corner, but I never mention it.
Like ants, a thousand black ants in my gut, just full of them, they're a dense mess but also skittering into my nerves. Her body is slow, sedate, she always looks at me with a half smile that is supposed to inspire confidence. It does. Sometimes I think she falls asleep as I'm talking and I always notice when she writes things down in her pad.
What would happen if you imagined yourself drinking a tall glass of clear, cold water? Picture it running down your throat into your belly, feel it wash out the ants and refresh your body. 
And I did, I really tried. I pictured the water, I let my belly freeze, I saw the ants flailing in the rush of the wave, but when they were gone, all I had left was nothing. A great big cavern of empty, of air, and there was nothing left to breathe.
The ants returned soon after, and I didn't protest. It seemed they might as well.
I think maybe we'll try something else next week, she said. and I left the cash on the little table by her chair before I walked out.

Inn

The days pass. A child emperor plays tricks with our minds, we go to bed exhausted, he hurt. The sun outside is balmy, I pull up my sleeves and the river promenade is busy again. The forecast says winter tomorrow, they close the schools, it doesn't add up. Alternate winter. The bar smells like New York bars are supposed to smell, beer on wood on a century of dim lights and conversation, you take deep breaths and try to remember magic over indifference.

I sat at my desk today, my tiny salvation writing desk that I painted dove grey and my socks still bear the stains, and the 2nd avenue sunlight hit me like a message from creation: endure, endure, endure, and life will return.

You are alive now. Soon you will live again.

Star Crossed

For a few moments, today, it was Spring. I stepped out and the streets were bathed in sunshine, the kind that warms your skin when it falls on it; birds were chirping, I expected little buds in the earth, even though I know it is too soon, too soon. For a few blocks, I remember who I am, what life lies in me and a hope that has been sorely missing. For a few blocks, I remember that I am more than January, that all of life is more than January and I endure this heavy blanket every year. It was like taking a short breath while drowning. 

It will keep me alive until the tide pulls away.