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.