Chipped

Oh, but it’s too many words to say, they get stuck in my throat, they get lost in the winding mountain roads, I have so much to tell you but I get caught in my own chest and let me just carry it, it’s nothing I haven’t held before. A year circles the drain, 12 months ago how cold it was but tonight the snow fell in warm drifts of powder, everything changes and yet somehow we are the same. Or perhaps we have changed and everything else remains, you cannot step into the same river twice.

I am not afraid of the change. I am not afraid of pain or of weights in this chest, I have walked through a lifetime of snowstorms, it’s only weather. A year circles the drain but another comes, not to replace it, but to build its spire on the base of all that’s come before. Dig where you stand, and soon enough you’ll reach the stars.

For So Long

It’s the way the sunlight is a little clearer, the blue sky a little crisper, it’s how your lips dry and your head buzzes with static over the silence. An alarm clock rang at four in the morning, streets empty, a warm rain on the avenues as I raced downstairs to catch a car. Do the dances you could step in your sleep and here you are: home. Or away, it doesn’t matter, I forget in an instant the metropolitan sway of my hips and lean back in the drivers seat, letting my accent sink into saccharine slowness. We have never all been gathered before; a tree stands trimmed with lights and doused with candy canes in a corner, homemade snowflakes strewn across the lower half. An anomaly. For brief moments, if you stood in the window looking in, we might appear to be happy, cradled in familial warmth and comfortable holiday cheer. And yet some moments I look at these people and wonder how any of us will make it out alive.

The truth, of course, is that none of us will. But that’s only a philosophical irony. The trick is to make it through a little better than you dreamed you could,
And to give yourself credit for dreaming
in the first place.

Storybook

A small child wrapped her hand in mine, contorted her body around our tangle not to lose it as she settled in for sleep. Ten thousand lost tourists meandered down Broadway and into tiny souvenir shops along Canal, oblivious to the pace of a speeding city, oblivious to my need to conduct errands in their vicinity without being infected with their unbelonging. I sat at a typewriter punching out a letter that didn’t know what it wanted to say when it started, but which snowballed out of my control into deep twisting rose-covered vines that spoke of love and loss and how cruel distance when lives fall apart; the open parenthesis key is jammed and every interjection I added had to be carefully considered.

He says we must pick one moment out of every day to be that day’s story. But how to pick one? Life is more often than not mundane. But how to pick just one?

Life is constantly extraordinary.

If You Only Had Time

The West Village rests. For one day, the streets are empty, the air is still. There's no traffic on 7th avenue, no deranged monologues along Cornelia Street, no pretense on Bleecker. A post-apocalyptic story amuses itself into existence in my head from a windy perch on the Christopher Street pier (do you remember, when we first came here, how different the west side was then and they had only barely swept the syringes off the docks?) while sunset dances across the monoliths. Again, again your heart grows beyond itself, the extended silence settles piles of words like snowflakes along your insides, I stumble sometimes, there's no denying it, but in the end the path always lies clear. Stick to your work, he says after I trip on ghosts of my own making, and he couldn't be more right. Stick to your work, let it prove your points to yourself. When I was seven I told my father I was going to be a writer and he said yes, I think so. The fire doesn't leave you just because you sleep well at night.

Besides, isn't it one-thirty and you're up?

Eve

Traditions return, the city empties out. Like so many years before, I find myself scaling the bridge at dusk, too early for twilight and that magic wash of color you know will come, but still. 

But still. 

Turning around halfway across, carefully treading onto the bicycle lanes, stand to look at the city. The jumble of buildings, each piece insignificant perhaps, barely recognizable on its own, but all together they create a skyline that soothes your senses, that build inside you a feeling of being complete, of being one whole person, built from years of individual pieces which in their entirety make you who you are.
You are not without the pieces, 

but you only are because of the whole of them together.

For a short moment, the late afternoon sun breaks through, scattering little bands of peach and ice blue across the glass buildings of midtown and near Queens, flecks of gold on south Williamsburg, that strange depth on brick which reminds you the city is enormous and never-ending, containing multitudes, that you are but a small piece and yet indispensable.


I thought I had loved before I came here, I thought I knew the expanse of my heart and just how large it could stretch but I have learned I knew nothing. I have learned that the heart is a muscle without limits, I have learned that love is a magic that knows no ends, as I walked back down the long slow slope back to the safe warm nook on my island, twilight arrived and changed the whole city again. I stray, sometimes, I sit too long in late afternoon dusk and forget just what lies beneath.

But don’t worry. The city will remind you when the time is right. And it'll be not like you were never lost, but like you were lost

and found your way home again. 

On Sugarplum Fairies

The Bowery rests, for a few quiet nights the streets of New York are empty. It is a gift, you unwrap it slowly, again and again, block by block. I forget sometimes all the things I have to be grateful for, forgive me.

I remember them tonight. So thank you.

Boroughs

You were in my dream last night, it was a strange dream but sweet, I woke in confusion and smiles all at once. It was too early to rise and still somehow I ended up late on the train and rushing through the underground for a day in social flurries. Arrive home at last in the late evening, full moon walking alongside me down the avenue, scour the interwebs for reasonable airfare, think about the places one can go and what they might be like. Some of them we know but they are all different now, my skin is tougher and doesn't tingle like it once did. The apartment smells of holidays. You get a break now.

You would do well to take it.

Hello

Miss the local by a heartbeat, watch the express trains ricochet past, count your late minutes. You run so quickly through your days that you forget your hunger, forget your checklists, forget the small voice at the base of your heart and what it keeps trying to say. I haven’t the time now, you tell it, but you know that is only a half truth. You haven’t the strength, you haven’t the courage, you know what it’s trying to say and you’re not yet ready to hear it. 

But don’t worry. The heart will wait. The heart outlasts every defense you set up before it. Don’t let that scare you. 

Let that give you hope. 

Love, Actually

The temperature rises, you walk through holiday street markets but hear only birdsong, something in the back of your mind remembers spring, you smile deep into your lungs at the recollection. Every day how many times you trip but at the end of it isn’t there always a reason for those smiles? Isn’t there always a way to let gratitude sweep clean the soot from inside you? I ran along the river today, slowly, my body so tired from its illnesses but so glad to be breathing again, to see the light dance across the bridges and glitter in distant skyscrapers. I know it’s confusing, love, I know you’re tired sometimes and lost in the fog, but keep breathing, put one foot in front of the other, eventually the congestion will ease from your lungs, eventually the sun will return, maybe not in the form you expected but oh it’ll shine, and you will see clearly, and for a moment there will sit in your chest a calm like you never knew you could expect, and you’ll know everything will be okay.

I know the path isn’t entirely clear.
But keep walking it.
Trust me.
All the best is yet to come.

Pull Me Out

Illness rages through my body, I sit catatonic on the bed and stare at the wall. In the shower, my legs give way, I marvel at the mechanics that keep us standing without so much as a thought to the action, I think a lot of fevered thoughts that slip away into the winter afternoon, but am unable to catch them. An established writer asks if I’m in Brooklyn and I respond only that I’m on the island, forgetting that there are a million other places I could live but New York and he wasn’t asking about boroughs. That there’s a world beyond where lives are still being lived. I go to the bar later, I know I shouldn’t but it’s the only place with enough peace to write, and find it’s the grumpy bartender on shift, but at least my table is free and she plays entire Radiohead albums without pretense. My swimming head sinks slowly to a still bottom, the intangible words that have been drifting through my cottoned head begin to cluster in coherent thoughts, I see again the magic of words — how I’ve missed the magic in all this bureaucracy of grit! — I see a new year spread out before me that does not erase the year that passed: everything builds on itself and you are only who you are because of who you’ve been, and yet that isn’t necessarily who you’ll become. 

The window is open at the bar, the boiler running rampant and uncontrollable. The sweet smell of weed drifts in. Exit music plays. You think of summer. I forget sometimes that I ever believed in magic at all, but it’s not too late to remember. It’s not too late for anything.  

Breathe

Keep breathing 

Don’t lose

Your nerve. 

Dying Is Easy, Young Man

Your head is full of fantasy, again, wild storylines run rampant around you as you navigate subway rush hours, grocery stores, chores. Illness rattles your body but it is not the cause of this delirium, you are. Even as a child your mother says you made up stories, your whole life you've been acting out dialogue you couldn't pursue in real life. Sometimes it strikes me that perhaps everyone does not do this, and I am floored. It takes me twice as long as usual to scale the stairs out of the underground, my limbs falter, my breath doesn't reach the lungs, but here we are.

But did you see the sunrise this morning? Did you take a moment today, just a moment, to stop and think how singular your life, how extraordinary the gifts you've been given? I wrap mine up sometimes, when I've forgotten to see them, truly see them, and then it's as if they arrive to me brand new, with colorful ribbon and sparkling announcement of their arrival. See me. Remember me.

I had a fight today so mesmerizing I forgot all about the laundry I was folding, all about the cold air seeping in through the crooked windows, I had a reconciliation and a trip to the moon, I know the real world requires our presence but we are there plenty. Come, play hooky with me for just a while, let's see what's around the corner.

The real world will wait
for the treasures we can bring on return.

Landfill

(Rainy Sunday, 36th floor, see both rivers in the periphery and marvel again at the cityscape around you, vintage train cars to Radio City and the bar wrapped in holiday lights, but how at the end of the day none of it matters compared to the soft, sweet rainbow of poetry that sits again on your desk, that sits again in your bony fingers, that curls and stretches and yawns its unused muscles back into existence, you look at their winding, singing letters and think you must be the luckiest girl in the world to have them fall off
your 
lips)

On Sunday Morning

An alarm rings. You’ve already dreamed of it a hundred times so it cannot hurt you now. There was a moment in the quiet evening that I heard again the soothing sounds of peace in my ear drum, it breathed around my heavy head and sank into my blood flow until I sat smiling into nothingness, I do not forget what a gift it is, not what I spent to receive it. When I step into the sleeping home, a Christmas tree lights up the dark room, everything else is still.

I’m okay.

Mantra

(if you don’t heal what
hurt you,
you’ll bleed on people
who did
not cut you)

Spela Shoreline

While you were listening, the voice says, were there any aspects of this talk you found particularly compelling? I come to, having heard none of the words that came before this. My mind is a thousand miles away, my mind is a dozen months away, my mind is lost I was hoping someone might find it but the flyers got soggy in the snow and no one could find a number to call. My roommate takes a mental health day, looks out at me from under the covers with a conference call on mute and pleads to be put out of her misery. I bring her coffee and no relief. The couple across the street have sex, winter dusk turning their brightly lit window into a showcase, into a holiday display behind lazy drifts of snow flurries, I try to write poetry but am constantly interrupted by the bobbing behind the blank sheet of paper. Her pale breasts, his unruly afro. Later, finished, or at least perhaps satisfied, I see their hands waving in the air for some post-coital conversation or other. See my own muted reflection in the window. Seven point six billion people are, at this very instant, living lives in which they are the main character, it blows you away. How life is precious, and beautiful,  and kind, and cruel, and above all short enough that you owe it to yourself to make every second count. One floor down, a man sits alone on his couch, in a messy room, looking at his phone. I fear if I do not tell all the stories inside of me I will explode, or -worse - deflate like a forgotten balloon in the corner of a birthday party.

All this to say, I forgot to say thank you
but not a second went by when I forgot to
feel
it.

Dial Down

At last it catches up with you. All day, all week, for ages it's been circling your street corner, been just outside your line of vision, you could feel it approach but catch nothing if you reached for it. For once, it is not the dark, wet blanket of winter that finally sinks its teeth in you, but a wind like a current, a moment's peace, a brief instant when the jumbled thoughts in your head all line up and you see clearly at last that which has only scared you in the unknown. I race to find pen and paper, to jot everything down, to not forget how my present and future paint themselves in my to-do lists. For too long I have been slipping, and at last I find footing. The Universe is testing me, more and more, again again, the first step is to realize you cannot rest on your laurels. He calls and I hear peace on the line, today I read a piece of poetry so precious I cried and smiled at the same time, life is gifts and daggers in a jumble, just roll with it. We speak in half truths, I know, but the wind is here now, I think I can breathe now, I'll dig where I stand and promise to unearth the other half of the truth for you; it's not perfect, but it's a start.

You are here now. What will you do about it?

Drill

I dreamed of road trips, of expansive vistas and a driver who changed course at a whim and I thought how odd but how right at the same time. A baby morphed into a puppy to great delight, the famous singer in the back of the bus squealed, I pointed out scenery as we flew.

I woke with a hangover in my heart, a muted sadness behind my eyelids. Back to reality again, and none the wiser. My dentists hugs me and says the teeth are fine, just like we agreed. The pain in his chair is a welcome relief. It’s gone when I rise, and I am better off than before.

Agains

Look at me, I'm growing, she says, as she unboxes a white Christmas tree in the already crowded West Village apartment. It's only different. The twisted monster unfolds and writhes in pastel ornaments and jaunty lights, you laugh and toast to ghosts of holidays past, it's a delicious tradition you wouldn't want to do without, even as everyone rolls their eyes and tears their hair with every year. I stare past the branches, lost in trains of thoughts that run nowhere, slowly. The walk home is cold, and just as heavy in my bones.

There was a moment, in the strange afternoon, where I sat in the emergency room of a downtown hospital, wracking my brain for morsels of light, where I thought this is what life is. We got through it after all, didn't we? But I came home with my head exploding and fell asleep before my time, and all I could think was but this isn't what I want. Sometimes the Universe doesn't leave it up to us, and then what do we do? The holiday lights sparkle regardless.

I just forget how I ever did it, myself.

All You Can Bear

Wake early, red and green lights still bright at the edge of your vision, I had so many dreams, I was reluctant to let them go. You were there, and how sweet a quiet moment between souls, it's a gift but I don't know where to put it anymore.

I took a long run along the river, Monday morning so full of sunshine and mild beauty, the waves wild but kind in that way life can be, sometimes it overwhelms me how little I know and how much I have yet to learn; the Universe holds its secrets until you are ready for them, until you can prove yourself open to whatever comes of it. I whispered my gratitude into the waves later, but I do not know more now than I did before. It seems a treacherous road to sleep more for the dreams to return.

I'd rather learn how to make them true.

Last Saw You Laughing

The country is quiet, dark, the stars come out and your breath billows like clouds from your mouth. I wander through Victorian hallways, glide my finger along banisters a hundred and fifty years in the making: how small we are on this earth, how insignificant, and yet to us how much this brief moment in times matters because it is ours. What do you wish you had done with your sliver? Remember most things will outlive you.

The little hamlet prepares for Christmas and you get a brief respite, a moment of hot chocolate and familial small-town innocence, it’s a blessing. I know New York couldn’t protect me against all the pain of a life, I knew that, didn’t I know? Maybe I was just hoping it could soften the blow. You recognize the person in the mirror again, you got your brief upstate respite, got your fresh country air and your weeks or months or however long (it was hard to keep time, then, and didn’t seem necessary) in someone else’s shoes and oh didn’t you like how they fit after all.

You wonder what the bottom looks like and if you’ll know when you hit it.

How many times you have to hit it before you allow yourself to get back up.

Marcy Ave

They put something in those chicken sandwiches that make the fear run right out of you. They put something in that beer to make your smile start at the very bottom of your belly, make you believe in the possibility of your own future, make you remember your name even when the cold wind tries so hard to blow it away.

I came home later, threw clothing in a bag like a crapshoot, there’s no telling what you’ll find when you open it again. If that doesn’t work out, something else will, he says, and you start to remember that freedom in your blood again, how right it is. I decided one day I was done with the fear of the unknown, sometimes I forget, but no matter. The road is always there when you’re ready to find your way to it again.

Mire

How you recognize it like an old friend when it arrives. For days it circles you, on the horizon, at your doorstep, just outside your line of vision, you know it is there but when you turn around the sun appears to be shining. Your steps slow, your head falls heavy on the pillow each night, you think you could sleep forever and curse how tempting the thought. And then one day it stands there, straight in front of you, unabashedly real, reaching out its hands as if to shake yours but instead plunging straight into your chest and wringing the last pulse from your cold, leaden heart. You recognize its fingerprints along your membranes, revel almost in the calm comfort of giving up, giving in, being swept away and drowned by its heavy, thick treacle, it is here at last now I needn't run from it any longer.

Winter lies dark and impossibly long ahead. You know there was something you were meant to do with your days, but you cannot for the life of you remember it now. Perhaps the secret was you were never meant to do that at all. You sit yourself down in the deep, dark, sticky mess of your convictions.

Wonder who you'll decide to be when it's time to step out.

I’ll Be Gone

Early morning along the river, it really is winter now but how beautiful it is in its cold sunrise and twirling smokestacks, the sharp contrast of glass buildings and the way pain reminds you you are alive. I sat on the train, later, and felt melancholy sink its tired teeth into my lungs. There is too much to this life, for every pour of joy there’s a tidal wave of the opposite behind it to overwhelm you.

I have to remind myself to take deep breaths now, where they used to happen on their own. I know this vise around my rib cage will let up eventually. This train is so long, is all, and I never seem to arrive where I meant to.

Oh Dear

Mild, sunny afternoon, I climb onto the fire escape to wash windows still playing at Industrial Revolution colors; dirt and grime runs in rivers down the side of the building. How quickly the money runs out when you are not paying attention. For a short moment, I wonder what the hell I'm doing, but my inner defenses shoot into formation and distract me. I dreamed last night of unexpected baby birds; today I hung Christmas lights and imagined what the season would be like with a little family braided around my sentiments, what a peculiar idea, I found myself surprised at the prospect.

The Mystery swirls and builds. The sun rises and sets. You hold on for dear life, marvel at the sharp turns.

Try to remember only the bits where you laugh.

Impostor

Some words come too easily, some sleights of hand seem natural when they fall out of your muscles, you sit in a dark bar and wonder at your own poker face. She sits on a couch in your own home, speaking of hospital staff and assault procedure, of the secondary trauma in taking your experience seriously, I started crying in the shower today so maybe I'm not ready to leave my room yet. Voices come from across the ocean, weaving tapestries of the pain of being alive. All you can think is that if it was to be so often this hard, shouldn't the good have been easy to hold on to? There's an answer in there somewhere, you weren't meant to find it yet.

We spent the day 40 floors up, looking at the skyline of a skyscraping metropolis and dancing our feelings into reality.

It's been too many nights with
to now suddenly be without

Easy

Navigate the trains like you knew them, navigate the streets like you want them in your bloodstream. The bourbon sinks deep but none of it mattered, at the base of my spins sits only a whisper, sits only the secret knowledge that a story moves on, moves out of my hands and into the world. I tried to tell him what the Universe had shown me but the world is too large, the life too beautiful. When I say I love you it cannot possibly mean all the things I want it to, but please know that my veins flow differently now because of all the things we are, and all the things we have yet to be, that must mean something in the great Mystery. A story moves on, moves through me and that is the secret after all; we are the river, and all things that are to come will flow through us even as we move. I had the answer once but this drink will do for now, I squander my tips on the F train, all roads lead you home
if you let them.

White Snow Red

A book closes. I go through the motions of day but in a daze, running lines in my head, testing my muscles against opportunities for improvement, seeing how the threads and storylines ache for polish and knowing some time you have to let it go. What an ebb and flow is this work, is this life. I ran along the river and the sunshine was bright but the wind so cold, I reckon the point is take the good with the bad, make lemonade and allow yourself a shot of bourbon in it. I found mistletoe in a box of Christmas ornaments and I suppose it isn't too late to pick up pennies in the street, she writes from the Arctic to say the sun has set for the last time in months now, here is polar night and all the strange, dark magic it brings.

I flip through handwritten pages, thoughts from a time when that was all I had to have, a time when I could stare at the skies for hours without a goal and trust that something would come of that, too. (And how it did). I take a deep breath, read the lines again, look back at my story, and begin to wrap it up.

...I don't know everything, and I don't control everything. And that's okay. I've learned that I can roll with the punches. 
I don't like the pain. 
But I like seeing myself pick myself the fuck back up 
and live. 

Note

(The November winds are cold.

You do no one any favors

facing them alone

Least of all yourself. 

Trust me.)

Purpose

You spend hours circling it, run yourself out of excuses and tire your muscles in doubt. The bar is quiet, Monday night and rain, no one can find it tucked away on the side street; this suits you. Spread out at a table where he told you of the daggers he’d twisted in her heart, you vow to wash over the stories with fits of your imagination: the bar is too dark, the playlist too good to not return here simply because your heart bleeds. On the page, an adventure plays out before you: you know it like you wrote it, and you did but only literally. He says you have a lot of tricks up your sleeve, and you remember it’s true, remember you are more than your fear. How difficult it is to remember sometimes.

Your heroine twists herself inside out to survive a game without rules, she fails and grows and you watch with amazement as she comes out the other side like you thought you never could. The bar fills up with laughter, with drunken banter and a rising playlist. Nothing else matters, you scribble in a margin. There is no plan B for a reason.

This is the only thing you were ever meant to do.
This is the moment you choose to do it right.

Gethsemane

Quiet sinks into your bones: a season of gluttony and consumption spreads out around the dirty tenement apartment above a busy bodega. We play jingly music and comforting movies, discover hidden dumpling spots and unknown breakfast quirks; the devastating cold takes a break and I ran to the end of the island at twilight without losing my breath, the city is a gift all of its own, wrapped in sunlight and promise. My roommate asks for rent money and I see again the waste of my life's potential, the gilded security nets of my contemporaries fortifying around me. Today I sat with an old, worn copy of a revered book, and remembered a teenage self so enraptured with its twisted, sharp wordplay that it changed her own words for years. It seems a selfish pursuit, this, spending all one's time on creative rollercoasters, hanging on for just a morsel of something pleasing, when one could be out saving the world or similar, building up that savings account or enrolling in the society approved rat race, but here's the thing: we live entire lives on hope alone, because if one day we could string together enough words that meant something, there's a chance they could make a bigger difference than you ever could in that 9-5, however comfortable, however good it made your parents feel. Sometimes I wonder if Jesus was just a mortal hippie, whose parents shook their head that he refused to live in the box, when he was simply trying to find a better way to spend what little time we have in life. Religion sprouts when we refuse our insignificance.

let them hate me, hit me, hurt me, 
nail me to that tree

My money runs low, disappointment high, this isn't the life society would ask me to live. But if I do not write, I waste away. And what is fifty, sixty years of emptiness, to even just a flash of fulfillment?

I return to the word processor. Whisper my gratitude to the blinking cursor. Remember again (again, again) why I came, and
more importantly,
why I stayed.

Gratitude, Year X

The years pass in tumbles of valleys and peaks, some Novembers pummel you with their dark matter and others glimmer with hope and overwhelming affection, these are the rules of the game, and if you want to play you must consent. The ways the dice fall are out of your control; this you must accept, too. The newspapers scream about the coldest holiday in a hundred years, the metaphors scare you in your feigned bravery, winter lies impossibly long ahead.

But for one short moment today, I took a deep breath, looked at the rubble of my life, and saw little spires of life twist their way out of the dusty ruins, new green like the shoots of spring. For one short moment, I remembered to step back and see past the storm, past the encroaching polar night, and I saw that I was grateful, for everything that led me to this point, and everything that leads me beyond.

I accept the rules.
Thank you.

With Windchill

Morning is quiet, sunny, an icy wind dragging across the alphabet avenues. The city lies still, you breathe deep cold breaths into your lungs as your feet pound known pavements in sunrise. Large, old bridges span impossible waters, the city tells you stories while you run, how sweet the moment between you. We open the bourbon early, wrap ourselves in sweatpants and cinnamon scents, he writes from California to say your pie tin is in storage in New Jersey, and you make do with a cake pan. Some work-arounds are easy.

When the wine runs low, we bring out the holiday decorations, change the music. Life is long, and hard, and the days are cold, and dark eventually. But you don't have to accept everything just as it is.

Sometimes you can circumvent the real world,
sometimes you can rearrange the narrative:
give yourself a chance.

No Me Diga

Same train as ever, how different it looks as it snakes through other boroughs, there’s only a slight unease at the nape of your neck now that reminds you of something untouchable lost in another tunnel under the river. A small weight next to you on the empty train car.

Your map of the city tumbles and bleeds, twists itself in curlicues, cherry picks colors from a new palette, but the new coats of paint don’t really matter. At the end of the day, no matter how tainted, how dirtied, how washed with nostalgia, these streets remain your own, this city remains a story of your own making.

This is your home.
That doesn’t get lost with the subway system.

Complicit

Stand on the Bowery, he says under his breath. If the cops come, you tell me right away, I stop. We giggle and shake our heads, disperse to our lookouts, remain on the line, hear paint cans shaking on the other end. Soon, the masterpiece appears. All it says is marry me.

He speaks of the first trembling moments. Of how he didn't appreciate the city's rowdy artists, of the busy fumes of Second Avenue traffic, of strange Russian vodka that made his southern head spin. Now, here he was, in love with a girl who saw only magic in the messy city, who had made him move into the thick of it, who would walk down this street on a chilly November night and see her name spray painted on a shop gate: here they were, and Everything was yet to come. The artwork was secondary, but it was there.

We giggled our departures into the mild evening. I rushed home to my to do lists, short sweet moments still lilting on my lips. New York gives you fairy tales in the midst of its grime.

All you have to do is see them.

Side

It looks different from this end of the borough. The sun sets early over skyscrapers you know, the wind blows cold through streets you don’t. Everything is quiet, dark, sleep is a heavy break from all that you think of. Everything is new, except you.

You look at yourself in the mirror.
Wonder if that’s the problem.

Sweet

(In the late afternoon, at an empty bar, in a corner seat, a story returns, begins to speak again, reminds me where it was I was walking. As the room filled with Friday freedom, I sank into the peaceful stillness between printed pages, and I remembered instantly how I had missed them. I fall off this wagon a thousand times.

The thing that matters is that I climb back on.)

Flurry

And in an instant, the blizzard has arrived. We wade through heavy, wet drifts on the corners: me pulling the hood tighter over my brow, her sticking her tongue out to taste the snowflakes as they fall. I have wrestled with the angel and I am stained with light and I have no shame. The air in my lungs is so tired, the blood in my veins, it always took me a minute to catch up, I know the woman who lives in me, how she sways around her thoughts and her moves before landing, how you cannot rush her. A day spreads out before me in freedom; once this snow passes, I will be left only with letters and ink, once this snow passes the city will be different than it was. I cannot stop the world from changing. The mice find new corners to chew, to make their way into this home where the heat doesn't work and the rent doesn't make sense: this heart was not made for clean lines and checked boxes, it lives only for passion and delirium, I cannot force it to settle for less. Life is much to precious to accept complacency.

I go to bed early, try to ignore the mice in the wall. If I sit in this chair for long enough, eventually I will remember what I came here to do.

And I will do it.

Snow

The forecast howls with freezing temperatures and gale warnings, the threat (or promise) of snow staggers across the screen, we brave the Brooklyn winds to condense our farewells into appropriate soundbites. Sometimes there isn't more to say; all is well.

I return to my village, wrapping my coat tighter, but light of heart. We speak of the holidays, and he says you never really have the city to yourself, but nothing could be further from the truth. Sometimes you walk a street in this town, and every other person melts away, you can whisper your secrets into the sidewalk and know the city will hold them. On the other side of the country, the evening is mild, and warm, and tomorrow it will be sunny again, but no matter. Sometimes it isn't a competition:

all is well.

Notes

I pick up pennies in the street, I don't care if they are dirty
I sing songs where none exist
I cannot speak before coffee
in the morning
even when prompted
My optimism is intransigent

Nothing will ever matter to me
more
than this town
not even you
But don't take that as
bad news
It just is

There's a month
or two
or three
when winter buries me
and I will not remember my
name
nor yours
It's okay

Come spring I will
drown you in
flowers
in sunshine
and the giggle I save
for special occasions
and here's the thing
You'll be it

I am a hundred degrees of ridiculous
(I know)
But I am one degree that makes sense
It'll make your pieces fall into place
And I think
you'll ignore the
copper coins
then

AUA

Morning arrives with strange dreams and stranger realities, you begin to work them into your muscles and wonder at how strange this life you have been given. One day when I was 14 I rode a horse straight into the jungle and saw the world spread out around me from a mountain top; I knew then, too, that our days are gifts whether we take them or not. I unwrap them one by one, sometimes gently, sometimes with wanton disregard, they scatter behind me in drifts and trunks and paths of years, how each one has lead me to the one I open today.

I pack my bags, prepare for arrivals and returns, for cold November air but warm November promises, my skin is brown out of season, my heart light out of turn, one day I wrote a line so sweet I thought someone else must have written it; one day I opened a gift and I dared to believe it was
for me.

Klor

The painkiller wears off and your cortisol races. How many hours left until you can turn it off? There’s a wide sky full of stars outside your window, the tropical evening is warm but what can I do from inside a palace? There are journeys we take that do not move us anywhere, and sometimes just standing still will change the heavens around us, how strange it is. My roommates write new tales of invincible mice and all I can think is how I long for that wretched, dirty old tenement room that is mine.

It’s a blessing to see riches
Where no money lies.

Island Time

I forget the time, the date, the day of the week. I forget reason, and habit, and any thought beyond the present. I consider my life, consider what it might look like wrapped in a suitcase. I consider the road, what it does to me and when I should start to listen. If I buy a one way ticket now I still have the rest of my life to get back. That may not always be true. 

We walked in the sand late in the afternoon, the light a ridiculous shade of happy, chasing little waves and letting the tide make fools of us: everything was easy, everything was now. I didn’t think of you then, didn’t wish you were here, I sat on a roof on an island in the Caribbean one morning and tried to breathe the sunrise into my lungs but the secret is the sunrise already beats within us. I know that now.  

I twiddle this ticket between my fingers. Feel the sunrise whisper the answer in my veins. 

Still

Wake early, sounds of an island asleep drift past your window, it’s another world and you wish you could see it. One morning I sat on a roof in the Caribbean and spoke to the sunrise; everything was bleeding then but I think my skin has healed now; the scar tissue makes it hard to stretch like I used to but I am alive, I am still breathing into the sunlight and asking it questions. There are strange lines of color along my body, I had forgotten it in the melee, I am still here although I am further away than ever.

Open the door to the morning. See what comes of it now.

Equate

How quick the change. One night you lied in the back of a school bus shivering as a full moon rose behind the pines, and suddenly one morning you watch turquoise waves slowly roll to their tropical shores, it’s a ruse, how is this life yours alone. I sat by the edge of the ocean for one still minute and looked at the water, quiet, steady. My grandmother always marveled at how we stepped into the same water as Cleopatra, as dinosaurs. They say you can’t step into the same river twice but my grandmother, she knew. The ocean follows me to the ends of the earth, every time I turn around here it is: reliable. We build homes around our hearts from whatever driftwood we may find, pray they will keep us safe, sheltered. At some point you let go of the house that burned to the ground.

At some point you decide to build anew. 

Fall

Last weekend of peak foliage, citizens of the city spill into the parks like they’d never seen a leaf before, or like kicking them never gets old (it doesn’t). I walk with my eyes closed straight at the sun, and it’s a sweet gift if you remember to see it. Behind the trees, a city spreads out: a strange, wondrous city you will never know fully and yet vow to never give up attempting to. She sends an itinerary, and you pack your bags before you’ve even unpacked them. A new voice lingers at your fingertips but it’s too soon to trust the whims of the season. He sends you a picture of a home in boxes. Says I’m free, and you know it’s true. The heart in your chest grows and grows, a year ago you wouldn’t even have known it could do that, but here we are.

It’s not up to you to know the way.
It’s only up to you to walk it.

Elastic Heart

Early morning, Queens, N.Y., the first commuters fill the train while I squeeze in with bulging bags and tired eyes. How deep my breaths, how light every step, pink sunrise over a world so different from the one I left behind. I sleep on the train, and there is no sleep as safe as the neverending A train, there is no soothing sweeter than that of being home.

We sit at the fancy restaurant later, ordering bubbles and dancing around the inevitable, until we both sit crying; our French server handles everything across his bar with a comforting steadfastness, you cannot ruffle a feather in New York that didn’t want ruffling. If you want to tell my story, it’s yours, she says, and she doesn’t know I’m already telling it. That every word I spin is a love story, and so, in the end, is hers. Sometimes we don’t see the answer for all the questions in the way, but such is life.

The street is loud outside my window, there’s a wide gap where the November air comes in with the traffic. I sleep not like I never felt fear.

I sleep like I felt fear and lived.

Ends

A month comes to an end. The yellow leaves have all fallen, the little kids dress up and wander the neighborhood, it gets cold. I have lost track of time, I have lost track of everything except the things that truly matter. They sit in my belly, digesting, building my cell walls and that strange part of a human spirit we cannot see in microscopes. I went for a last run along the mountain and the bald headed eagle returned to say its farewells, sweeping past me before moving on to other tasks, it was a sweet nod and I took it, smiling. Packed my bags, prepared for other shores.

This morning I pulled a last note from the envelope, my constant companion on a strange journey I could never have predicted. I read the words out loud in the still morning, a quiet laugh bubbling in my chest at the absurdity of its accuracy. I went to the desert with a hundred questions, and yet somehow I answered the ones I didn’t even know I carried. The desert will do that. The journey will, too. I sit with heavy bags and a full heart in an airport terminal as though everything isn’t different, the little note playing between my fingers. A month comes to an end. Everything else is only beginning. 

But no matter, the road is life. 

Notes

They return slowly, the words. They seep into your stream of consciousness nearly undetected at first, just whispers of something familiar and an uneasy stirring like you forgot the gas on. They build in your spine until they expand in your lungs, there's a flicker behind your eyelids as the lights come back on, everything smells of dust but more like a used books shop than something died. A typewriter roars to life. A story unfolds.  

Wretched lifelines stretch across your skin, gnarl your muscles into convoluted confusions, but no matter. You will live this life as it was given to you, as best you can, you will race across the world and into countless brick walls, because at the end of the day, when you have sweated and cried and bled, sometimes there will be a word, or two, or a string of sentences that make sense, and all your wear will wash away and you will be born anew.  

You have gone to the ends of the earth But you will come home some time.

Mornings

I have to be rent
and pulled apart and live
according to the demons
and the imagination
in me. 

I'm restless. 
Things are calling me away. 

My hair is being pulled
by the stars
again. 

Manix

A picture floats into my inbox, alphabet avenues on just another ordinary Monday and this is what life is. My heart skips a beat, counts down days, calculates hours. How soon I’ll touch your streets again. Today I sat in a sunny window and cried - again - at the closing chapters of a book
I never seem to finish, of a story that I want so much to do justice, as though it mattered. We sat later drinking wine and I thought this is what I came here to do. Now it is done, and it was the strangest feeling but perhaps it was just the alcohol soothing my anxious veins.

Today I sat in a sunny window and knew - again - that the Word was magic and that just one minute in its sunshine is worth a hundred weeks of work. I forget, sometimes, but how easy it is to remember. Today I wrote a story that I think perhaps is is not entirely dreadful, and what a gift that was, if only to me. Tomorrow, the work begins anew.

That’s okay, too.

Gift

The late October afternoon sun is gentle, knowing its power wanes but is still Everything. The mountainside limps from summer fires but every tree that survived stretches its branches taller now than before toward the skies. I stood on a log across the river, remembering a balanced weight somewhere at my core, remembering what it is to breathe - to truly breathe - when no one else can hear you. Up the river bank, a small school bus stands waiting, its signs painted over and the stop sign decommissioned, the inside a strange home in the wild. My phone lies silent, with no connection to the world except for the soft rumbling of the odd car through the forest.

I stepped out later, long after sunset when the warm Indian summer day had given way to approaching winter, to brush my teeth in the dark. A million stars wrapped every inch of my periphery, the night so black that the Milky Way looked dusty. I found myself waiting for a shooting star, but then I realized: I’ve already been given every wish I could ask for. I whispered my gratitude into the stillness instead, went inside to wrap myself in blankets and silence, and I knew.

I would never have known to ask for half of the gifts I’ve been given.

Slam

The days race toward the finish line, you long for end goal but panic that you won't have packed all your pieces before you reach it, what a cruel reward. Trudge through the Post-its on the pages, trying to answer all the question marks with poetry but coming up with grating fortune cookie translations. Remind yourself to put one foot in front of the other, even a small step is better than no step at all, and then suddenly there it is: all the ducks line up and recite the story how it was made to be told. You throw out pages, entire chapters of canon but it doesn't matter, you found a better truth, you sing a sweeter song. I see the finish line again and know I arrive at it differently than I thought, but I will arrive at it and that is the part that matters; that is the part you will remember. I pulled a note out of the envelope this morning and I didn't know what it meant then but I know now. Try as I might I cannot control everything; try as I might I still have to humble myself at the feet of the Unknown, today I found an answer I didn't even know I was looking for and it answered questions I had taken for lost causes.

(these tracks are only to show me
where I've been
they don't tell me where I have
to go)

One foot in front of the other. I promise you you will arrive.

With Feeling

Don't make a backup plan. 
Have nowhere to fall. 
Nothing to catch you.  
If the landing is soft, 
you will fall. 

If the abyss is deep and 
dark and 
impossible  

You will leap. 

Humbles

A full moon climbs the zodiac, quiet, unassuming, in peace. I sit on the back patio, listening to starlight, asking for granted wishes but really only spending time with the Universe, it's enough. A month draws to a close; last night I booked a return ticket and it reminds me there's an entire life out there waiting for me. I've only been playing hide and seek, and everything I stowed away for the sublet will lie there waiting, a little dustier perhaps but still unchanged. When I say I am glad to have known you, I mean it. When I say I am grateful for this opportunity to break and mend, I mean it more than I knew when I asked for it. I sat staring at the stars wishing one might fall, but the best wishes we grant ourselves, it just takes a little work, it just takes offering up your own beating heart on a slab, out there in the open, vulnerable, trembling, brazen enough to believe it may survive what unknowns may come, and not just survive but grow into something better than what it was before, and here's the thing, here's the thing, everything worth pursuing is terrifying as hell. That's how you know your heart is out there. The heart breaks and breaks but is not broken. I moved into a quiet basement in the desert not knowing what I would find, but here's the thing: when you go into the dark with a searchlight, what you end up finding is always another piece of yourself you didn't know you had missed.

The Universe doesn't simply grant you wishes. You make your dreams come true, and just humbly give the credit away.

Nods

The temperature continues to plummet, you run down
 an empty Brooklyn street in the middle of the night 
praying for a car but also laughing so that's what 
you'll remember. You were the best thing to happen 
to me in 2017 lingers in your eardrums, wraps itself 
around your drunken sleep, there's confetti stars on 
your eyelids and you part reluctantly with a year 
that's torn at your insides but strengthened your 
heartbeat and 2018 is cold and scary now but you are 
ready to make it grow you are ready to turn it 
into 
a 
fucking 
jungle  

This pot is equal parts water 
and gasoline.

the Middle

(There's a silence in the country you never get used to. A slow steady breathing of grass and heartland, of the way we were and the way we'll never be anything else. My senses stagnate, I forget what it is to tingle in fireworks. One late summer evening I arrived in New York City, innocent and excited but somehow full of the knowledge that nothing would ever be the same now, how right I was.

I stay here, in this quiet countryside, I'll bide my time and do the work, but soon I must pack my words and return to the noisy avenues where my heart can rest; I've lost so much in this life, my love, but if it means I can come home to your steady embrace, I will want for nothing in the end. The notes amass, remind me what's waiting on the other side:

I also had a dim idea that if I walked the streets

of New York by myself at night something of the 

city's mystery and magnificence might rub off on

to me at last.)

Passin' Me By

Monday morning arrives, all fresh faced bright eyed sunrise over the mountains, a stack of clean slates and ignorant energy. I wipe the Sunday night fallout from the walls of my heart, from behind my eyelids, I try to take deep breaths even as my lungs are rusty with disuse. Peel away all the have-tos that amassed, all the returns to other people's distractions and thinking too much about what to do instead of doing it. What remains is simple in form, not pretty, not particularly appealing, I sit in an oversized college sweatshirt with my hair akimbo, the only thing that exists is this strange space where the story is everything, and nothing else, truly matters. I pull a note from the envelope, realize the quote means more now than just the words I've read before:

"I'm writing a novel," I said. "I haven't time
to change out of this and into that."

High Desert

There's an emptiness that lingers when the novelty wears off. A darkness lies in wait, it circles your fortress looking for soft spots, for weak links in the chainmail; turn away for a second and it twists the knife in your chest. I stand silent at a precipice; is it asking me to jump? Everything slips through your fingers, this is just a vacation from reality, I miss New York so my lungs ache and fear, again, I am on a limb that will not carry me. 

But remember: it will pass. 

Look up. 

The canopy is waiting for you. 

Crooked Creek

Sunny day, the little old school bus bumps up the map, as it turns from paved road to dirt road, from hillside to steep mountain and if it can't make this turn it's over. It's too late to turn around, you've committed to this insanity, in the wilderness no one can hear you die, but when you reach that summit and all the world stretches out around you and not a soul in sight how quiet the voices in your head. I make endless cups of coffee, I sit on an old log and stare at snow-capped mountains and the valley below, listen to the sounds of nothing, fall asleep in a sun-drenched cot with the emergency exit hatch open, beat poetry falling from my fingers as I do. I came up this mountain, I write to myself, and I don't know why. I think perhaps I have to sit here until I do. Flip through pages of Kerouacian rambles, find my own scribbled handwriting nodding in agreement, years of knowing the wisdom of the dharma, years of understanding the Word and the Road and the Truth how they meld; I drove down the mountain eventually, terrifying death trap in first gear and all the baubles within shaking loose from their holds, but the coffee cups remained firm, the lucky penny in the cup holder, the music in my ears and the breath in my lungs. Sometimes we don't know what we're looking for but isn't that just the thing? The miracle is we realize what it is once we find it.

Keep your eyes open
The secret is here, somewhere.

Re:mind

I woke with a start, torn from strange dreams of last minute flights by a persistent alarm and in the darkness I couldn't remember where I was. The quiet country nights mess with my urbanite head, I'm lost and all out of sorts in the stillness, I get too much sleep. The sun rose slowly over the snow-capped mountains as I tried to align whatever bones might build me for a day. Sometimes I seem unable to listen to the voice inside even as it yells and screams and drags its nails across my lungs, how is life a constant process of relearning? Again and again the Universe tells me truths; again and again I forget and let other dictate my path according to their ideals. But the sun rose again over the mountains today, it does not give up in the face of the unknown so neither should I. I sat in the space I have built for myself and pulled another note from the envelope. The little voice inside my chest grew quiet, nodded only and pointed to the paper:

(cajsa, you have felt the madness
rage in your blood, you have seen
delirium, you have known the 
universe in words; do not doubt,
ever, that it is your path.
everything else will be alrig ht
as long as you write. 
                       so do it.)

Future Perfect

 Well, said Pooh, "what I like best," and then he had to stop 
and think. Because although eating honey was a very good thing 
to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it 
which was better than when you were, but he didn't know 
 what it was called.”

Speak

A day disappears in useless apathy. Heartbreak pummels my insides, it darkens even the bright, sunny  desert day, and the words fall from my listless arms, seeping into my quiet chair and leaving me heavy with emptiness. A small girl stands behind the screen saver, she knows I know she's there and waits patiently for my return. I see her from the corner of my eyes, mouth I'm sorry as I return to the cinder block around my ankles, choosing the distraction over over the work at hand. I go to sleep early, decide to start fresh in the morning. At dawn, take a deep breath and pull a small piece of paper from the envelope. Laugh and send my gratitudes to the day:

NO EXCUSES.

Returns

Early in the morning, I climbed the same mountain again to say my farewells, not a cloud in the sky and an entire valley stretching out around me: how different the path in clarity. Now there is a metaphor, I snickered to myself, as I sat at the top of the hill and spoke to the city below. It took a while, but we made friends at last, didn't we? It took a few thousand miles, a few thousand breaths, it took a persistent beating heart but here we are, the sun shining, the sea quiet. I drove through the city this weekend and knew it, remembered it, I built a map of all the years between us and saw that I didn't have to be angry anymore. I am happy here, she said, and I knew she meant it; how can you carry a grudge against something that bathes those you love in such peace? I drove out of the city in the late morning, Santa Ana winds carrying me back into the desert; I drove and drove until the sun set behind me, until the stars multiplied across the great American night and I knew my way again. Returned to the little nook where my words lay waiting, pulled a large note out of the envelope I'd left:

...and in the midst of all the uncertainty, in all the things I adore about my life in Stockholm, I long for New York so my heart aches. Like if I could just come home, maybe everything won't be okay, but at least I'll know the soles of my feet
are burning.

(Malibu)

(The thing is, I have to let you go. I have to let go all the things I’m losing anyway, they weren’t my treasures to hold. I sat at the edge of the water, at the other end of the land which I had crossed to see this very place, to wrap my head around what it was and what it would look like now, when everything is different. The ocean twisted and turned and beat itself into towering waves against me, as if to offer no answer, no consolation, and maybe that was exactly the point. Maybe that’s exactly what you get when you cross thousands of miles to solve a riddle that refuses capture. As I stood in the surf, a new story told itself to me, I laughed into the saltwater and ran to write it down before it slipped away with the tide. The ocean takes, and takes, and takes, but then it gives again, and you cannot choose the gifts, only choose to receive them and make something of what you have been given. This journey is mine and mine alone. You have other miles that require crossing, so I have to let you go. There must be other treasures, somewhere.)

Musing

When I wake, a squirrel sits in the palm tree outside. Everyone is out of place. We hiked to the top of the mountain to see the world stretch out below but all we saw were clouds and the feet before us. It’s a metaphor, we said and laughed, and it took us an hour longer to get down than up. 

The saccharine smile that hides in my western upbringing comes out again, beaming at servers and strangers, effusive in politeness and banter, I can’t take her seriously but she fits right in with the Santa Monica boulevard crowds, tossing her blond curls and nodding at the ways of the industry. Over dinner, we speak of leaving Williamsburg before it was what it’s become. I had a rent controlled apartment you know, kept it when I went out here but I had to let it go and then I never looked back. You wonder if you ever got tired of New York where you could possibly go. You don’t have to think about it, now. Take a deep breath. 

Be here now. 

You can’t see further than where your feet stand, anyway. 

You Worry, Child

It rains where it never rains, the temperature soared 60 degrees and I peeled layers of clothing before flying down into the palm tree valley and they say somewhere just beyond lies the ocean. There is much to say, and once the cocktail wears off I will say it, once the miles land in my muscles I will tell you all about it, because today I laughed and cried in the same breath and I saw the Truths of an entire universe laid out before me, surely you do not expect a person to stay quiet with the enormity of Life on their tongue?

We had so many drinks, you had so many miles, first we will sleep. The cicadas sing you a lullaby, this heart beats you a rhyme to which you may rest, today you saw the whole world at your feet and the only Word I had was wow.

It's just motion, and it's just time

I load the car, pack my bags, set alarms, set my sights.

Today everything came together, today a story closed itself and I knew, I really knew, in that way you only can when you turned all the other noise down and listened only to the little voice at the very bottom of your heart, that if I can do this with the rest of my life it will be enough (although the voice says it will be everything), and it is the most breathtaking drug. I ran along the water with a laugh in my chest, spending the miles recounting my gratitudes, and how many they were, how many gifts I have been given lately and I had no idea until they sat within my skin. I load the car, pack my bags, set alarms, set my sights. I arrange the leftover papers on my desk, pull out a stray from the pile.

how much would it be to buy a used car
  in Kansas these days?

fuck it, let's find out.

My cup runneth over. I wanted you to know.

on my Parade

I wake long before dawn, toss and turn watching messages come in from other time zones. Some are sweet, some are devastating, and I lie awake wondering at how life is. In this bubble at the edge of civilization, I imagine myself beyond reach, but I fall asleep again and dream heart-wrenching dreams of love and loss until an alarm shakes me out of it. In the morning light, I feel soft, vulnerable, without my suit of armor, this coffee strengthens me, these words build me but at the end of the day we are nothing more than soft flesh easily bruised. I wonder how we can ever dare to love when we know the risk. Turn to words instead, let them move me, let them build me. It meant something different once but now I put my faith in words instead:

(not like a corral: like a wave)

Damn Straight

Wake early again, stretch and yawn and breathe mindfulness into your waking limbs. When we drove through the canyon there was snow on the ground, they send you pictures of apple picking and upstate fall foliage and it's 85 degrees here what are you doing? I check the forecast for California, begin to pack a bag.

I lost my words today, forgive me, I let myself be led astray and I swore I wouldn't, you built this treehouse around my piles of paper and I left the nest too soon, how my wings ache, I knew better. But the fact is my compass knows true north, and it is freedom; the fact is my heart knows its dream and it is this one, the one I see with my eyes open. Everything falls apart and burns to the ground but I have packed my bag and I will not be standing still now. These are the cards I was dealt and I will play them till I die or it dies in me, there is no other way and there never was. Magic runs through my fingertips, it hums in my skin and sings in my spine, I saw the straight and wide path and I turned right off it. Pull a piece of paper out of the envelope:

life is too short to be ordinary. 

Signed

The temperature plummets. Scores of birds gather and fly south, they know there's no point in beating this dead horse, everything is ending. I went for a run along the snowy mountain and watched my breath take shape outside of me, this breath which tries so hard to center me even as I want nothing more than to fly away into the ether, I pounded out the miles in silence, with only a nearby eagle for company. The outside world grabs to steal my attention, tearing gashes into the lives of those around me, tempting me with alluring new promises, doing everything it can to distract me from the work at hand, the blinking cursor at the edge of a messy page. I wonder if it's possible to isolate oneself even more, but the secret they won't tell you is you never can outrun yourself. I see the exit signs along the road, itch to take one and see where it leads, but I return instead to the basement room where I am staying and begrudgingly tear a piece of paper from the pile.

(are you present? be here now.)

and I have nothing to retort.

On Life

I know you don't want to hear this, she says, but I have some bad news. Your heart breaks a thousand times over, how entire mountains tumble with time and we don't know how to rebuild them with just these hands, just this frail, soft love, how nothing is invincible. The clouds hang low on the mountains, I drink another cup of coffee, not yet ready to leave the room, not yet ready to start a day, how do the days keep moving even as everything else is shattered to pieces? Perhaps it's a comfort. Another day, another sliver of paper from the Universe, I wipe my tears:

do not fail your dream when it needs you most. 

Thank you.

Valley Below

Sunday is church day and it's safe to assume everyone sitting in this restaurant is okay with how much we are swearing. Sweet old beautiful voices that have lived in my ears far more years than I ever had to live without them. I remembered, later, how some of those people were responsible for saving my life, and there's no way to explain that to somebody. There's no thank you card big enough for the gratitude. Still, I returned through the mountain pass with a rain cloud on my shoulders, how far away the work at hand, how dry the ink at my fingertips. I laced my sneakers, remembered my breaths; the sun set in a fiery eruption behind the peaks, I pulled a sheet of paper from the envelope, shook with the gratitude that spills over from inside my chest:

knock me down I get the fuck back up again. 

Foliage

It snows in the mountains. I drove winding roads into woods on fire, all yellow aspens and trembling red maple leaves, and tried to remember who I am. Five days in exile, already I falter. An old, used version of myself reappears in my muscles, she sits in my spine and reminds me who I was, what I left, it's not so much a reminder that we can never escape our pasts as a kind nudge of how far we can come. He sends stories of the city, it feels a million miles away but my heart aches for it like I lose the needle on my compass when I stay away too long. My father shakes his head, how nothing makes sense to him, and I realize finally that it doesn't have to. As long as I remember my direction, as long as I stick to it and follow the steady voice in my ear, I am always going to be better off than when I fall off the map when someone else shakes it. I pull a long strip of paper from the envelope. Can't help but laugh.

Remember New York sees you when no one else does, and loves you at your most unloveable. Love it as recklessly and for as long as you possibly can. 

On Trust

Early afternoon in a sun-drenched basement window,  I sat huddled at a desk with quiet tears streaming down my face. A rough draft full of ink squiggles and Post-Its lay in front of me, years worth of magic and struggle sandwiched between its pages, a lifetime of lessons so sweetly placed in its hands for safe-keeping. I woke this morning with nothing but question marks, persistently complaining into handwritten journal pages I don't have the answers. I don't even know what answers I'm looking to find, while a steady voice in the back of my head countered every attempt at avoidance by relentlessly whispering trust the process. Sometimes you have to let yourself choose to keep working, sometimes you have to put your ego and fears aside, even for just a little while, and carry on despite them. Because eventually, as I sat there in the rubble of my creative flotsam, a solution appeared, a story unfolded, an answer wrote itself right in front of me, and for a short moment I dared believe that everything would come together after all. A small girl stood at the edge of the last page, waving. I pulled out a piece of paper from the envelope.

(somewhere along the line
the pearl would be handed  
                  to me.)

And it is beautiful in my hand.

Day 3

I forget the workings of time, the ways of the real world, I rise in the dark and breathe only in the currents of imagination, piles of clothes and paper and half drunk coffee cups amass around my body, it's a dream. I pull out another sheet of paper from the envelope, nod.

I laughed in the night and thought
nothing else matters, 
and nothing ever will.

Balance

A day of desert sunshine is followed by another night of storm. Lightning explodes behind the peaks, silhouetting them the panoramic windows washed over with rain. At last there is noise, at last something cuts through the quiet; I sleep too heavy, I forget to stir. The to do lists look so strange now, they only tell me to do that for which my heart longs, they are more gifts than demands. When I stray too far from the desk, from the pile of papers and words and intricate swirls of imagination to which my entire soul is tethered, an itch in my feet pulls me back. How is it possible to live such a life, and have it be one's very own?

I know I am broken, and shattered, and a pile of debris, but for this short, sweet moment of respite, I am allowed to exist outside this body, outside this heart, for a short, sweet moment I am only these words and what I can do with them. I asked the Universe for a challenge and it gave me a storm, but it did not send me to the ocean without a life raft, and I will not drown.

The valley is dark now,
yes,
but the sun rises
also.

Prologue

Dark clouds rolled in over the valley, lightning bouncing against the mountains and pulling thunder behind it like a chariot; I slept like a baby. Before dawn, I woke again to the complete silence of the Great West, soft tendrils of sunlight sifting through the desert grass and turning the mountainside foliage to gently waking embers. Another day, another gift, I whispered into my coffee, unable to take in the magnitude of such an offer. All this, for me? I opened a window, let the morning breathe for me, as words and worlds stretched and danced around my head. All this, for me. I reached my hand into the envelope again, longing for every minute of the rest of the day to come:

If the Word isn't mean to be 
my salvation, 
why does it call me so?

Do the Thing

Jet lag jumps on my bed in the morning, squeals at me to get up. The world outside the windows is pitch black still, quiet. I tip toe into the kitchen, make coffee in silence. Stand on the back porch to say good morning to the grainy hushed light that yawns and stretches over the mountains in the distance. The air is cool, it is autumn. Meditate, interrupted only by the thought I am free; it makes me smile, how can I possibly wish it away? Not 24 hours in, and the desk is already a creative mess of paper and pens, of post-its and coffee mugs, a pleasant hum settles in my gut and I open a window, as the first rays of sunlight streak across the field outside, setting the straw on fire. 

I reach my hand into the envelope of words, take a deep breath, pull out another scrap of paper:

If I do this every day for a year, 

where will I be 

a year from now?

Ok. 

With a View

The room is impossibly large, uninhabited and clean, a blank slate of a room with no curtains. I drag the desk from a corner to the windows, large panoramic windows and no distractions. The view holds an entire valley, an entire mountain range in early fall colors, an entire landscape of my own imagination, it's breathtaking. I pile books and papers and notepads on the desk, hang a painting above it. I rummage about, trying to get comfortable, trying to let the cool air sink into the soles of my feet, here is the gift I give myself, here is the precipice of a dream, he asked me how I got into writing and I said I didn't, writing just chose me at some point and I had to follow it. It's a pretentious answer made less so only by being true. I open an envelope full of notes to self, jewels of words that have littered my paper piles for months and years and built themselves a home; it's a veritable fortune cookie, I decide to pick one a day and let it guide me. I close my eyes, run my fingers across the thin sheets, pull out a small scrap and look at it, smiling:

do the thing.

Ok.

New York, NY

It feels different this time, she says as she peers into your empty room. It’s like you’re really leaving. She’s not wrong. A little suitcase stands by the door, how could it possibly contain all the life I’ll need from now until winter? I check in on a flight with no return ticket. There is some sort of penance being paid, but it’s not clear what for. Five years ago today I returned to this place and it still seems like a dream, every day still feels like a honeymoon and maybe that’s what love is, you’re getting closer.

New York woke me in sunshine this morning, beautiful crisp September sunshine the kind that breathes in your lungs for you. My steps were light towards the river, smiling at strangers and reveling in one last good run before departure. At the Williamsburg bridge, a man climbed the cables and said he had nothing worth living for, so what harm would it do to stop. The tears surprised me, the way my breath forgot its timetable, here we are on the ground with our frivolous lives and one person a few hundred feet away is trying to end his. The tennis courts remained busy. The city giveth, the city taketh away. This moment is not about me, I stammer over the phone line, but somehow it was all of us: that life is fragile, and beautiful, and finite, and you owe it to the Universe to spend yours better than you thought you deserved. Five years ago today I stepped onto a red-eye flight and thought I had bought myself just another few moments of magic, how could I know I had given myself the world? I walked through the West Village later with a song in my step, with a beat in my heart, with the reminder that distance makes your blood boil and the flowers bloom, I do not fear this departure because it is only an adventure, and adventures were made for the fearless.

I go to bed early, set my alarms for dawn, sleep a dreamless sleep.

What dreams could I have?

I am here.

Would Be Enough

How beautiful a September Saturday in New York, all soft sunshine and gentle breezes. The children laughed and danced with aged hardcore punks in the old park, I found pictures today from my first life in the city: the Domino factory still standing, the Brooklyn side of the East River still bombed out brick decay, the downtown skyline so low in the years in between; the Empire State looking exactly the same, the bridges steadfast and unrelenting, taxicabs on a street corner the most reliable fixture in your life. The bartender gives us free drinks, everything's a laugh. I forget how the city has changed even under my watchful eye, but perhaps the same could be said for me. I am not the girl who first came here, all home knit leg warmers and fear of the world. You are not who you were when you first set foot in this river, everything changes.

There's a kernel in your chest, though, which has whispered the same truth to you for all the years of your life. It whispered when the world around you was loud and you heard nothing, it whispered when you stepped away into a quiet spot and begged to hear it, it whispered when you took wrong turns and couldn't see yourself for all the road blocks. If you sit real still, just for a moment, and let your ears listen, you'll still hear a truth so sweet it'll break your heart. That is who you are. No river can wash that away.

From the Sidewalk

The room becomes piles of bags, empty shelves. It looks like a move. My roommate sniffs around the space nervous, wonders what I'm playing at. Would that I knew. There's a relief in packing, but leaving is wrought with fear. I fell asleep today on the express train in Queens; awoke with a start at Roosevelt Ave and for a moment didn't know anything, didn't feel anything, strange dreams lingered and wouldn't say if they were real life after all. Sometimes I think I make life harder than it needs to be. A small child ran into my arms today, laughing; we snuggled over books and she's never known life without me, I threw away the first piece of furniture I ever bought in this city and I don't know, somehow my restless soul began to commit to something, decided not to run so much. All this I was trying to tell you, but autumn wraps its cold spindly fingers around my throat, I'm so tired I fall asleep on strangers, I'm so weak my screams get caught in my throat and sound like butterfly whispers, perhaps this is the dream
what
a
nightmare.

Go On

Late night in Brooklyn Heights, the streets are black, the subway platform is being cleaned with a pressure washer, it's a stark contrast, or a metaphor, you can't be sure. I turned around halfway down the street to look at the window, to look at the light, to look at an entire life that fell from between my fingers, what use is there in remembering now. I threw out the old mattress, I cleaned out my closet, the room looks so empty suddenly. I ran my fingers over things I once knew, over things that felt like home though they weren't mine, I have been homeless for so long I didn't know it could feel like that, and now it doesn't again. I believe in all the good things to come; it's just so hard not to feel like I'm at the poker table with all my jewels being swept away from me. It's just hard not to feel like I had the Great Pearl and now am left with only the grain of sand once more. I turn it over in my hand, try to tell myself that I am not the diver but the oyster itself. I am not the wave but the entire fucking ocean.

It's just some days I am no wave, no ocean, no oyster. Some days I am only human, tattered at the seams and frail and soft and losing, losing, losing. Some days I live a script entirely foreign, it wasn't the part I'd asked for, these lines don't feel right on my lips.

But the script is mine now. And a pearl means nothing still in its shell. 

Parting

(let your purpose
be bigger
than your fear)

Siempre

This morning I found a penny in the street at Broadway/Lafayette, the city looks out for me, sends me an encouraging nudge. I woke ten feet under a hangover but these things pass, all things pass, I walked down a street in Fort Greene and tried to make it look different than last time. I suppose it did, but isn't it mostly smoke and mirrors, if you're being honest? Deconstruct and reconstruct the way your story sounds in unknown eyes. You know the formula for a best seller, it drips off your tongue, but this canvas hasn't been properly cleaned since last use: the smoke gets in my eyes, the mirror shards cut deep gashes in my hands, these pools of sticky dark truth weren't part of the paperback sales agreement. I sat on the Q train later, crossing the Manhattan Bridge after dark, and watched the twinkling lights of the island: for a short moment, it looked exactly like the first time I saw it, that cold fall so many years ago when I looked at the city like I'd fallen in love, when the city looked at me like it knew my name and I never wanted anyone else to speak it, perhaps that's what love is and you had it right all along.

Some stories write themselves,
and all you have to do is let them.

to Move

No, it wasn't Limelight, I think it was the Anvil, anyway you couldn't go there late at night and the transvestite hookers would take their customers to the loading docks of what is now the Chelsea Market, I saw it all from my window anyway then AIDS came and wiped it all away I lost 40 friends in just a few years it was a massacre. 

The old loft on the corner of Bedford is giddy with recollection, wide windows staring at a midtown in transition, how everyone steps into this river in their own time, it is never the same. I walked home along Washington Square Park and breathed deep a city I know only in my time, how my greatest regret is not having been here when. This town evolves again and again even under our watchful eyes, it will never live up to the fairytale we've made it and yet we never let the dream go. I get the drugs prescribed by my doctor now, it's just as well. Everybody saw David Bowie at some point, he is not gone.

It turns out to be a miracle simply that we are alive. We survive on our own naïve conviction; friends and family and complete strangers die, through no fault of their own, through coincidental wrong turns at a stoplight, people die all the time and yet here we are, alive, and with time left to realize our potential. Narcissistic ignorance carries us through to another day: of course it will work out, of course we will find something better; how else could we possibly go on? Even our heroes died, and yet here we are, refilling our glasses and toasting to the creative madness within.

You are alive.
That, alone, means you owe it to the world to wow us
with what you have yet
to give.

Full of Mumbles

(I came out of the woods 
by choice)

Around mile marker five, it happened. A strange tingle in my spine, a beat in the music that lifted me, how much faster my legs, how much stronger the breath in my lungs. I don't know why, but I smiled, I don't know why, but I practically laughed the whole way back under the bridges, do you know I asked the Universe for a chance to grow and this was never what I wanted so be careful what you wish for but here we are, and it will all be alright. When I told you I'm afraid of everything I wasn't lying, it's just that I've made peace with my fear and the point of life is do it anyways. We sat in a dark bar on 3rd avenue that has looked the same as long as I've known him, that's looked the same for decades of Irish drunks and sawdust on the floor, life changes from under us but every now and then we get the chance to see each other as we were and remember what a Good Life we've had. I let him go at the Bleecker Street subway station and bittersweet still has the word sweet in it.

I asked the Universe for a chance to prove myself and this wasn't what I had in mind but I'm getting exactly what I asked for, do you hear me Universe? I regret nothing.

I am terrified of the wishes you granted me but
I
do
it
anyways.

To See Me Though

The flood passes across the city, leaves only fresh skies and a quiet sunset over midtown skyscrapers. I weave through the suits of Grand Central and think how little I want their lives. They make for a nice backdrop. The second I hand over the keys I miss New York, wonder how I'll get by without it.

I wrote a sentence this morning so true that I'm still reeling from it except reeling is not the right word I'm dancing. I'm weaving this tapestry to a fucking magic carpet, try and stop me, you can't get more in my way than I can, you don't think I've spent my life battling this enemy? That's enough now. I ran along the water at noon, sun straight up, sweat in my eye, how tired was I, but it doesn't matter anymore. These feet will run on their own, these words will write themselves, I will fan these flames until the whole damn forest catches fire
just
watch
me

Lucky

Wake
From your sleep

A young Harvard grad jumps to take the room. How different it looks when seeing it through someone else's eyes: how much I could easily throw away. It's refreshing. I begin to pack in my mind; all I want to bring is stacks of paper, an unassuming painting over my desk, a bottle of liquor. She writes from the office bathroom to say he doesn't want me, and wonders how a room full of male coworkers will perceive her puffy eyes. We offer words of consolation, but what good are words? What are words but a substitute?

What are words but a substitute

The question is so terrifying I have to pack it away with the other things a young Harvard grad doesn't need to see. I pour a big glass of whisky, stare at the typewriter. There's a calm in me I haven't felt for months, in the silence at last the words arrive, hesitant, but there. What are words but a substitute.

Today 
We escape

We escape

Re:Hearse

The words return with the season.

I no longer sleep. The street goes silent after midnight, everything breaks, my mind races with stories, every time I close my eyes I have to open them again to jot something new down, I am not sorry. Every time I close my eyes the void grows and grows like the empty space at the other side of the bed I do not rest. Every sentence reads itself to me like a poem, every word is a weapon, I see the spoken word enthusiasts fight their battles on a stage and I cannot push the computer keys hard enough for this emphasis. I saw a dead man in the street today, passed out on the Bowery on his cardboard bed, eyes open staring at the skies, beautiful sunny Sunday in a cleaned up city that never sleeps, only lives or dies and at 2:30 in the morning when even the garbage trucks rest you do not know which you would prefer. His eyes were so hollow; there was no meaning to derive. We sat in an apartment in Chinatown with the roof sagging and I thought there is still magic here it is your duty to find it but the cigarettes don't taste so good when you've forgotten about them for a while, it's disappointing.
The words return when there is space for them to.
I make all the space in the world, I throw out my entire closet, I burn the furniture, I carve out my insides, there is not room for anything else in this hollow shell of a person, one day in my youth I made a deal with the devil and he does not forget. The words are here now, they make my toes tingle, they make my sentences run on like they're running out of time to be spoken, like I'm running out of time to be read, but the devil sits at the foot of my bed smiling because he knows he can pull the sheets from my body, pull the sleep from my eyes, he pulls the warmth from the little flame inside my chest and all because I said the word would set my whole
world
on
fire.

And Yet

We took the boat out, sunny Saturday in Chelsea and all the rich white Manhattan yuppies yell insults  at each other on the narrow bike path, but as soon as we left dock, how different the world. We coasted along the Hudson, watching the west side trill along silently in the afternoon, all brick stacks and water towers in a giddy patchwork once the glass monoliths of midtown receded in the distance. How my heart filled, how much gratitude swam behind my eyelids as the wind blew my hair to a mess. How love is not desperate: it only builds and grows.

The words return with the season. The streets return, the hum in the air that reminds me the city never left, all the things that let me sleep well at night sift in through my open window, the world beams at me. Yet some street corners remain shrouded in darkness, some steps I stumble, every few breaths get knocked right out of me. The sunny days try to fill a void that refuses filling, the sweet caresses of the city try to distract my skin from remembering how it breathed under your touch, I sleep well at night but I'm not sure it matters.

How a heart can be so full,
and yet so empty
all at once.

Barrow

How different 

A city

Just a few blocks westwards. 

I sit in the window and stare at a neighborhood I once called mine; from up here you can see the bright lights of midtown, the quiet courtyards of old brick buildings that lived when the country was new. It’s quiet, so quiet, and I can’t open a window without ruining the central air thermostat, it’s at once a palace and a prison. We walked down the west side piers and I saw my city as if for the first time. Maybe that’s what love is. 

Last night, I lay writhing in my bed, unable to sleep, well aware of every lost minute’s rest. The days are long but the life is short. He smiled at me but I thought this is only a means to an end. 

It might sound callous. But I have poetry and magic waiting in the wings,

Don’t tell me you wouldn’t do the same. 

Anew

I post an ad for my room. Dates flexible. With every reply, my body feels lighter, my soul closer to freedom. I wonder how long I could stay away, wonder at all the places I can go. I am not untethered, I am not lost, I am only dancing through the world knowing I built a safe harbor to come back to because it lives in me. Fall waits like a bogeyman in my closet but September is kind, encouraging, I check off items on my to do list and feel order arrange itself within me. A little girl appears at my side, in all the ruckus I forgot about her completely, I’m sorry I didn’t have enough heart to write your story I’ve just been trying to have enough heart to live. But I am here now, I am growing this heart beyond itself, I am growing every muscle I have to be soft and strong at the same time, my success is not an absence of tears but an abundance of love, fall waits like a monster but September is warm, yet, and only the beginning of everything. When all the ducks lined up in my chest, they made room for poetry, they made room for all the mad sparks and magic dust and when the Universe shines its light on your heart you had damn better be ready to open a window and see it.

Dawn

And then, at last, it turns. I woke in a fog, laced the running shoes despite myself, and let the mist push through my cells until it lifted over the bridges. A hurricane grows in the south, it rises the waters against the remaining pier pillars of the East River; I stared and stared at the waves as they crashed, my breaths heavy, my muscles screaming. By the time I stopped, my shirt clung to my skin but my mind soared. Drama swims past my timeline, but I got a moment's reprieve, I got a day of checked to do lists, a day of giggles and adventure, a day of hope. Remind yourself that you've never been a passive participant in your own life, she says. A book prints across the water with my name in it, but I don't need to move a single block to remember my name.

If I sit quietly, just for a moment, and wait, this city will whisper it to me again, and again, and again, until the day comes when I believe what it says.

Untils

Come with us to Mexico, she says, and you no longer pretend to look for excuses. Tickets pile up under your pillow, they flutter and giggle and fall out of your pockets as you walk, what salvation they bring to your ailing soul. The rain refuses to let up, you drown but slowly, miss your alarms. I'm only going through the motions. Fake it till you make it.

Fake it till the tickets mend all the pieces that broke.

New Moon

I wear tights again. Their constricting design and cinched waist remind me how September strangles summer, how you will be wrapped up and buried alive now for months to come. It rains. A psychic told me my new year begins now, and so far he's been right about everything else so who am I to judge. I sit at the typewriter tearing drivel into its seams; this is not what I'm supposed to be singing about. The typewriter knows it too, but consents. Give a monkey unlimited time and it'll write Hamlet, after all.

It's just that my time is not unlimited. I sat under the desert stars one night and wished for the world, but the Universe gives you such crooked instructions to reach it, I've begun drawing maps of my own.  It's getting cold out there, and just as cold in here, I sleep so well at night, it's my days that fill themselves with nightmares. My maps burn up while I'm lost in the brambles.

Wall Street

The mouse returns. I see it in every corner, every shadow. It moves the traps under the sink without ever setting them off. The weather drops, and I bury myself under covers while the windows are open. One night in the West Village I got so stoned that I walked home without feeling a single cell in my body.

The days pass. I smile in the right places, frown when appropriate. I make lists, plans, I go out to drinks, but do you want to know a secret? I feel nothing when I do it. Like January had sunk its teeth in me and forgotten to let go with the sunshine. I walk forward, one step at a time, and it looks like I get where I'm going. But my skin is numb when you touch me, and I don't know how to make the trip end.

List

I wake in a fog of last night’s cheap red wine, and even after I’ve managed to make the coffee I forget to drink it. Sort through the evening’s conversation to make sure I remember how ridiculous they may have been; everything is giggles if you want it. I say yes to the Caribbean. A new story writes itself in my head while I walk home from the grocery store. I look people in the eye as they pass me and wonder if they know what it’s like to have magic inside your chest.

Later, in a quiet west village duplex, I pile lists on top of each other. A new year begins, a clean slate of possibility and adventure. I flex my muscles, test my lungs in the clear air, I had a dream last night that broke my heart but it did not break me. 

I do not breathe like I never felt fear.
I breathe like I felt fear,
and decided to live regardless.

Where It Happens

Normalcy, when it returns, feels so familiar you have to pinch yourself to remember there was ever anything else. I went for a run, at last -- after weeks of illness my body longed for the pavement; my lungs wheezed the whole way to the bridges, but they endured. I help my roommate put up blinds, we all pile into her room and giggle over how ridiculous a life. The nights are dark now, but warm still; a little candle burns at the edge of my desk, it smells like stories, like life. I write myself birthday letters and smile at the prospect of a clean slate, a new year, unending possibilities. Remember that love is strength, that soft isn't weak, that fear is only a feeling. I had a dream last night that broke my heart, but the thing is it didn't break me, and I think there's a difference there worth not ignoring. I still woke in sunshine.

I still woke as sunshine.

I think there's a difference there worth not ignoring.