Flood

Everything returns. The energies that flowed through my veins but were frozen in winter winds thaw; blood rushes to my every cell, overwhelming my senses in words and visions and fireworks. The overflow bursts in tears out of my eyes but I force them down, let them fly out as laughter from my mouth instead. I smile at strangers in the streets and haven no intention of stopping. Fear may have held the seams of your skin together when the world was cold and cruel.

But the sun is here, now.

I am not afraid, of anything.

Half Birthdays

Union Square was still at the tail end of rush hour when we navigated the creaking elevators with our excursion packing. When we crossed the bridge and all Manhattan dazzled below us she squealed; I could only echo the sentiment.

Beyond the cacophony of Flatbush Avenue, the garden lay peaceful and smiling, a handful of revelers strewn across the winding paths and thawing lawns. She ran around laughing, looking for the birds who couldn't help but go crazy in still barren trees, while I kept my eyes glued to the ground, eagerly searching for signs of life.

And suddenly, they were everywhere. Little green shoots, barely visible under the cover of fall's long dead leaves, gave way to entire swaths of flowers: violet crocus, bright yellow aconite, and fearless white snowdrops appeared at every turn, each time as much a delight as were they the only flower you had ever seen. The further into the woods we got, the warmer the sun, the stronger the feeling in my chest that the cold grip of the Darkness is loosening around my spine. While she slept, tucked into a warm blanket and a smile on her face, I ran my fingers along fuzzy magnolia buds and pussy willows. Soon, soon, I whispered to them, or perhaps it was them whispering to me, all I know is my skin tingled. I came home later, the sun setting eventually, as it still does, but everything looked different: the street, the words of encouragement pinned to my walls like a fortress, they looked like promises. Soon, soon, we whispered to each other, and I knew, then, that I had made it out alive.

Petal

It doesn't stop
The tickle in my chest
The awe
every day
of the lightness in my step
the silly smile on my face
It may get redundant
to talk about it
to write about it
to read about it
Forgive me

I am so not tired of feeling it
yet.

Post Title

When you wake, the bed is smaller than usual, but warmer, too. You revel in a few stolen moments before alarm clocks and watch the sun rise over the water towers. It is spring. Yesterday in the park you squealed over budding blossoms, no longer tentative but bold, self-assured. The breeze smells different, the air cool velvet with rising frost: you live.

I left the warm embrace and walked to the west side, chilly but it, too, waking up. With the darkness behind me, I can see the buildings again, see the cobbled bits of city jumbled together in that way I so love. I haven’t seen you lately, I haven’t paid attention.

But here you are. And I will return if you’ll have me.

At All

For a few short minutes, the silence was absolute. Every nerve ending from my skin sank into the core of my being, drifted along a South Pacific stream and watched with curious gaze how the pieces of my life wrapped and unraveled before me, painted themselves in new lights. I returned to earth with all the same pieces but they looked different, now, and they tattooed answers along their flanks that I had never seen before.

The city looks different today, gray and cold, the bitter winds seep in through a window that cannot be closed. But there's sunshine in my belly now, there's a tiny flame of hope that holds on even through your rainy days, I will cling to it like my life depended on it, I will bury myself in words and wrap them around me like life jackets for however long it takes. I know the world loves a hero's journey, but maybe it's enough just to survive and come out a little better than you were before.

There was a dead mouse on the kitchen floor this morning. You know there's a meaning, a metaphor, a beautiful lesson to glean from it. You know the mouse deserved to return to the earth and become flowers with the spring. It hangs instead in double bags on your door knob so you don't forget to take it to the bins.

That lesson you'd rather not see.

Peace

Broadway lay awash in steam and revelers; it seemed the whole city left work early and streamed out of their boarded up buildings. Where do they hide all winter when you are out here scowling?

The feeling bursts into your chest first, but then it spreads slowly, takes a minute to seep into your blood stream. You open a window wide and listen to the sounds of streets so quiet for months: the fresh air washes out an entire season of stale, warms the frozen floors and you take deep breaths without thinking. Along the river today I snuck through bushes to search for signs of life, I didn't care how it looked. You know this moment is a treat and you are determined to squeeze every last drop of it. I still cut myself to see the darkness bleed, but I know it isn't long now, I know I'm making it out of the woods. 

“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.”

Re:pose

The morning is mild, but not out of the ordinary. The skies are grey, people hesitant in the street. You wear a jacket and wonder if it's too thin. They had promised magic.

When it came you would not have had it any other way. How in an instant the shoots sprout from the earth like nothing ever died, how the sun sparkles in the East River like all was pure and good and nothing ever hurt it. We stayed outside the entire day, peeling layers of clothing and laughing at the birds going mad in the trees. You know there was a time when you couldn't so much as open your eyelids but you don't quite understand it, now. Was that me? Was that true? I no longer remember a time without a smile on my face.

The magic, thus, lies not in the warm air on your skin or the bright light in your eyes. The magic lies in how you forgive winter its destruction, how you forgive yourself these scars across your body, how you overflow with love and truly believe you have never been broken.

The blissful ignorance is short, of course. But it saves your life, every time.

Believe

Yesterday, along the river
I saw little green shoots poking out of the earth
Not far
Not many
But they were there
Alive

And something in my chest said
So am I. 

Of Mine

The sun rises, again and again it rises in your window and you walk down the avenues with your head raised and your eyes closed, you do not stumble. Marvel at the feeling of being alive several days in a row and the Darkness feels so far away. You feel your limbs again, feel your skin, feel your heart beat in your chest. The dog digs in your bed and sleeps soundly as you work; when you come home at the end of the day, a saxophone plays from an open window like a cliché and you swallow it whole, there was a picture in a magazine of cherry blossoms and it made you shake in giggles.

You are not out of the woods, yet, do not fool yourself. You are offered a moment's reprieve, a temporary dose of an anodyne, but it washes your sinuses clear of sorrow and you'll take it. I woke in words today, I sat at the typewriter and poured scattered bits of art onto 4th street, while visions of New York streamed on the screen like a nudge, like a wink in my direction and a reminder of all the things I've loved.

I never didn't love you. The woods get so thick sometimes, they get dark and thorny and horrendous, they try to drown out magic and memory in one fell swoop and try to convince me I don't know what I'm doing but it isn't true. I never didn't love you. And every day I'm with you, I have won.

Monday Morning

Rainy Sunday washes the streets in waves of potential, you run laughing at the edges of Chinatown and think you'll make it another season, after all. He asks if it's all in your head and you don't know how to explain the parasite that coils itself around your brain and distorts everything you ever knew, puts its full weight on your eyelids and wraps your head in cotton, your chest in lead. You want it not to matter, you want to speak about it as history, as anecdotes, but the snake still circles you in murky waters when you wake. 

When Monday arrives, there's rain in the clouds again but aren't they lighter? You meditate two inches from the spotlight and play make believe of sunshine on your cheeks. Put all your power in imagination. 

Is that not what you said you wanted, anyways?

And I Will Be King

Your muscles ache. You try to stretch them out and warm them up, bend them like young boughs in spring but they are old and gnarled with winter. The calendar does not tell you how much longer you have to live.

David Bowie comes on the screen, smiles at you in that way he does that reminds you life is mad and New York is your best bet at being part of it. It’s been two years since he passed gave you a final kick in the chest. You look over your words and wonder if you’ve done what you said, if you’ve made yourself proud.

But you are not seventy. You are not sick and finite. It is too soon for retrospective. She writes from a snowy Midwest and says all that matters now is make the art. You’re not to know what it’s for, yet. You envy her freedom before remembering your distaste for envy.

If you want it otherwise, make it otherwise.

How else could you claim to be free?

Annotated, 2

excerpts from a typewriter, an evolution.

the secret 
to ousting your demons is not
to starve them
it is to drown them in their own filth
to force feed them your blood
until they choke on it
you hear them gurgle as it sticks 
to their throat
just like it has done yours and you are not
sorry. 

Annotated

excerpt from a typewriter.

winter beats you to a pulp
you know the routine but it doesn't hurt any less to
bleed in the streets just because
you've done it before. 

This Way

She sits in the cold Midwest and thinks perhaps this is the end -- not of the road, but of their road together. Why is there no right answer? she says and you know you haven't one to give her. She speaks of art like a lover, like a calling, and once that fire has burned in your house there is not room for his underwear, his books, his dreams of your life together, it only smears ashes along the walls.

I fear my heart beats too violently lately. I fear it smothers and extinguishes, it drowns and distorts. I know my eyes are shifty; they fall off to the sides because I am afraid if they look straight you'll see the smoke and mirrors. They cry at the slightest touch, it's not me doing it, winter is an ocean and everything drowns. I don't mean to forget your name but there's a bubble around my head and I can't hear your feeling. Today I ran along the river and for a short moment in the sunlight I remembered what it was like to be alive, what it's like when little greens sprout from the ground and your skin is warm, your lungs full, I knew I'd felt it before and imagined I might feel it again. Count every good day: it is one day closer to a time when you won't need to.

41st & Park

The sun rises one minute earlier each day; you adjust your alarm and smile through yawns. There's a warmth on your skin that feels hopeful: sunlight. The dog lies in a sliver of it on the floor, basking. She gets up every time you move just in case you're going to the kitchen to drop food where she can reach it. It's a simple joy. Midtown freezes against your skin but it is New York to the teeth and you adore every step along 42nd street, oblivious of the crowds. There's a buzz in your hair, a breath in your lungs.

It may be just the day after the dip.

But you'll take every high you can get.

In Dure

The app says sunrise comes early, but when you wake your window is all snowflake swirls and impending slush. Your heart beats with courage and brazen optimism, but how quickly it deflates in the face of the world. You read old entries, try to pinpoint the day when it turns, when life returns, try to calculate countdowns and prepare your soul for the days remaining. Everything is a babystep, and you are constantly toppling over.

In the corner of the room, a word processor waits patiently. It does not freeze with the storm, it does not drown in the dark, it merely waits for your fingertips to thaw, merely waits for a dusting of magic to roar to life, to weave its colors, to open a door. If you cannot change reality, perhaps you can escape it for a while.

Perhaps this is how you live a life.

Siempre

In the descent all I saw were swamps. I was disoriented and shouldn’t we be there by now? But when I leaned over his shoulder, there it was, right underneath us Manhattan was stretching and yawning to welcome us home in wintery sunshine; I breathed a sigh of relief and we landed without the slightest bump.

I fell asleep early in my own bed, waking from strange dreams to realize the light was still on, my clothes were still on, I turned around and fell right back asleep it doesn’t matter. We’re already deep into February now, we’re already picking up speed and I’m determined to make it through this winter better than I know how. She asked what we would do if we woke up tomorrow and could do anything.

I don’t like hypothetical questions. I’m already living my dream.

But I Thought You Said Make Believe

I came back to boxes of merchandise and found that it felt like coming home. Stocking a car and arriving at a quiet venue that still smells like last night’s beer kegs, so alien under ceiling lights and empty, resting in anticipation. I wander the green room in search of treasure and forget, eventually, what the time is; alternate reality wraps itself around me like a warm blanket I knew I’d missed but not how much. The road lies endless ahead of the car, the rider, the setlist, each adoring ear is singular and all the same at once, you remember rocking in a dark cot on a blue night liner feeling like this was the only life and here it is again in morsels you sweep up the crumbs with your yearning heart. Look at him between verses and wonder how to explain that feeling in words, realizing you do not have to.

Music dances in your ears and tries to lull you to sleep.

In a million years you have never been less tired.