Sees the Wind Blow

The dog sleeps in the little nook along your side. She snores, and you don't want to move for fear of disrupting her peace. I woke too early again, today, the street still dark and wet with rain, while heavy clouds sat on my brow and screamed of stories the short sleep had let me forget. Still, there was a moment in the late afternoon, when I walked past a small West Village courtyard, that the sun broke out, and the magnolias were suddenly in bloom, and the daffodils littered the ground with their impossible yellows, that I found myself smiling despite myself. There was a moment yesterday, in a breathless, small room in Times Square, when my fingers remembered just how to dance across the keys, and my voice expanded past the confines of my own defenses, that I felt whole. I refreshed the cherry blossom tracker and the first flowers have bloomed in Brooklyn.

Something better is coming.

Trust me.

Downtown Train

The days are so cold, so gray, she texts from another world and says the air won't quite make it all the way into her lungs and she doesn't know what to do but try to get the time to pass. I walk through a softly shuffling museum and nod. There was a dress there I think you'd like, but it was a little too much color, perhaps, yet. I keep writing you letters, piling them next to the typewriter and I don't know what to do with them. The tap tap of the keys is so comforting in the silence, and maybe that is enough.

There's a mist in the air tonight, it softens the contours of the city and holds you without demands. They say tomorrow will be warmer, and the day after warmer still. A calm sits at the back of my spine, it hums and smiles and breathes for me, and when I remember to, I let it hold the reins. It knows winter will thaw, it knows the colors will shift and that this, too, shall pass. And because it does,
so do I.

315

This shade of
red lipstick
on the 6 train
in Spanish Harlem
in the museum
at the drug store
will shield me
from a world that asks
questions of me
I am not
yet
ready
to answer.

A Jour

I finished a diary today, it wasn't the way I wanted to bookend a year but it occurs to me that this is life and we must accept all its comings and goings if we are to ride the wave to shore. I closed it in peace. They had salted the footbridge along the river; were they expecting snow? I haven't remembered to memorize the forecast. The air was cold, to be sure, my breaths violent in my chest and my limbs frozen stiff, but my feet pounded that pavement until the blood raced all thoughts to oblivion: I was cleansed.

The ghosts of our past come back to scare us unasked; they dance around our heads and turn the ground into burning coals, there is no escape. But I looked mine in the eye today, we spoke at length and weighed our options. When the glasses were emptied and our hearts worn, we nodded in agreement. The truce was not anyone's surrender, merely compromise. The waves continue.

But the surf is worth its price.

Puddles

She sits by my side, follows my day with careful nudges and wise commentary from three thousand miles away; I am awash with gratitude at 14 years of friendship, how it feels like she sits in my living room. Do you know I can still hear my grandmother laughing, sometimes -- when I most need it -- it's like fireworks in my chest.

The day drags on slowly and rushes somehow in a flurry of neglected To-do lists: the bathtub has never been cleaner. I found your socks in the laundry, I found a dandelion along the river, I stopped to pick it up and ran the rest of the way home with it in my line of sight. When I forget to breathe, the ice grips my lungs and I still haven't called my dentist, but when I remember to stare directly into the sun, I remember all the things I know to be true and my back straightens, a smile builds from my solar plexus. The words all tumble out at random, and I forgive them: I believe the cherry blossoms will bloom again and I will be here when they do.

Hello

Monday morning arrives early, too early, but you cannot sleep and it lets you pretend to carpe the diem. There's a landfill where your room used to lie. I didn't pick up a penny from the floor of the subway station last night and maybe that's why the cold front moved in.

I stare at every tree to look for opening buds, refresh the botanical gardens cherry watch page looking for signs of life. I know it's desperate.

But I need the promise of a tomorrow so. I will do whatever it takes to get there.

Extraction

My tooth hurts. The thing about procrastinating is eventually lambs turn into lions, with sharp fangs and fire in their nostrils, it’s a cruel truth. You vow to do better but you never have before so why start now. Your father thinks maybe it’s too late to teach himself new tricks but you wonder if he doesn’t have 20 years left in him and what a life that would be to not have made a change. The best time to plant a tree might have been yesterday but the second best is today and today is the only time you can do anything about. You push the tooth to see if it’s a phantom pain, but they never are. It was a beautiful spring day out there today but you won’t believe it till it sticks around.

It isn’t trust issues if it’s just being wise from experience, someone says. You’ve never been more determined to rewrite the page.

Vernal

When I wake, the snow has already started, the schools are closed, the events canceled. Your parents call from a sunnier land and say they won't make it; the bathroom sink shines, spotless, the mouse traps have been hidden in the kitchen corners. You scramble your plans and wonder what comes next. Everyone seems to be falling to pieces and I carry their despairing shards in plastic bags around the city. It occurs to me I never thought anything could change. I assumed I would be a broken child forever, but it turns out her terrified limbs only reside in a small corner of my adult body. She will never move away, but maybe she doesn't have to. We've been together this long.

And I no longer leave those I love behind.

Snow

The storm is coming. The tv newscasters scream themselves hoarse about it, but you don’t need a forecast; your bones smell it coming miles away. There’s a chill in your spine that this wool sweater cannot beat. Last year on this day there were stoop cocktails, the year before that magnolia blossoms and the year before you were on a tropical island laughing. The season is cruel in taunting you.

This is the test you knew would come. In the face of your fears, can you breathe in light, can you chase the monsters away? In the face of the storm, can you stand at the precipice
and hold fast?

Witchcraft

The dog sidles up along my leg, deposits half her coat as she goes, lays her head on my thigh and snorts in that way she does when she is content. We are pretty sure she's a cat on the inside. At a moment's silence, you unravel, and you're not sure how quickly you must scramble to pick up the pieces. I ran along the river, late in the afternoon but still sunny because Lord if that spring isn't coming at last, and ghosts of an entire childhood chased me under the bridges. I summon my courage, try to remember the years of adulthood under my belt, but their sharp teeth still glisten, their bites still sting and hold on until they hear the bone crunch.

You know there are doors you simply closed, you know there are dark spaces you simply decide to ignore because you could no longer tear at your skin like you did and all the evils still lurk inside. There are so many days when you think you are strong now. But that closet door creaks and instantly I'm 17 years old again and drowning without knowing why.

The difference now is when my bones are broken, there are streets under the feet that will heal them right up again.

Gratitude II

How long have you lived in New York, someone said today.

And I realized later
the answer is
long enough that I could wear
a New York print
t-shirt
without apology.

On Gratitude

There was a moment today
When I was so overwhelmed with caring for
Another
That all my fears
Were washed
Away.

In retrospect it seems
A most beautiful
Sort of
Gift.

Madness

it doesn’t look like much from afar, from the air, a collection of scattered LEGO bricks on a straight grid of red and white bead strings, lights could be found anywhere, isn’t it small? But I traced the avenues with my fingers and found a small street corner, a light like any other, and knew that there stands a door to which my keys will fit. I gently wandered the streets with my eyes and remembered how they feel under my feet. I wanted to reach out and hold the whole city in my hands but it was enough just to know it was finally within reach.

The wind blew cold, freezing, arctic at passenger pick up but I don’t imagine that I cared. I know here was a time when I wasn’t here. But I can’t for the life of me remember what that felt like.

Turned Upside

The mountains erase time, you lose track of days. The nights are silent, dark, cool, you sleep like you've never slept before and wake to birdsong; sunlight melts the snow into desert sands, seasons evade you. I ran along the side of a mountain today, no, I flew, the altitude couldn't catch me, my mortality couldn't catch me, I smiled the entire way and thought what a miracle the world is to exist. We spend the days reading instruction manuals (differently) and building a new home: outside the back porch, the cows all have tiny black calves to show the world, the deer are oblivious.

Twenty-five years of these mountain ridges in our lungs and they've never been easier to love. I'm not even sorry, anymore. I saw three shooting stars from the deck tonight and every wish made my heart tickle in my chest, I just thought you should know, you were in them all, after all.

EWR

Late winter dusk over New Jersey, you’ve seen those cranes a thousand times and they always put you at ease. The small of your back is still damp from Penn Station stress, still damp from early morning goodbyes, your chest trembles and it’s not travel nerves. We read travel magazines and make five-year plans that forget career ladders and retirement savings:  it’ll take at least six months to get through South America.

Go through the motions of airport security, the steps are fluid now, fluent to your muscles, you haven’t run in days since your knee complained again, you are older than you once were. Talk to strangers in the terminal, consider hunger against the length of your flight. Your skin longs for fingertips you’ve come to take for granted, but if you can only make it five hours west across the Rockies you think you could be convinced to be distracted. There’s a mountain sunrise there that knows your name, there’s a slow drive into a valley that makes your heart grow a hundred times over, there’s a certain scent to airports that remind you who you are, and five years is a long game even when it’s only the beginning.

Spectacle

Your stitches are all out
but your scars are healing wrong

Your knee hurts. You try not to think of it but your mouth busies itself with discussing it to no end; if I speak enough of an evil, eventually it'll fall out with the exhale. When he leaves the apartment, you breathe song instead, it heals you. A gray sky waxes and wanes outside the window as you try to see something in the crinkles of a blank sheet of paper: they look at your words in print and nod approvingly, but you feel no different. I am constantly running out of time and don't they know my old injuries won't let me keep up.

You can ice this all you want but I have set the whole thing on fire
I'm not sorry.

Try it again
Breathing's just a rhythm. 

Approach

The line at the grocery store is as good a weather vane as any; you curse your procrastinated errands. The streets are dry when you go to bed, the apocalypse seems unlikely. You go to bed early, prepare for whatever may come. 

It's March now. Let the snow come. I am ready. 

Who Will Love You

Monday morning arrives bleak despite the sunshine, a hangover jumps barefoot on your temples, howling, and the coffee only serves to make a sloshing sound in your belly that throws you off balance. As your cells struggle to find the hidden serotonin reserves, and you know there was a lot of Very Important Stuff you were meant to do today, a quiet voice inside you whispers of  a mint green machine in the window, of how the sound of its keys tap, tap in a most comforting way and how the letters that tumble from its dances are unconditional, immune to outside pressure, how they are free. There's a jumble of points on your to do list, the hangover drags a savage anxiety across your chest, but the quiet voice continues, unabated, to tell you of the mint green machine in the window, and you smile despite yourself.

In the street outside, the air is changing, the sky is higher, little buds form quietly in the Greenstreets, and your blood knows it. I nod to the voice, spool a blank piece of paper around the cylinder, and let the tap, tap, tap of a typewriter remind me again who I am.

Starve

When you wake up, the street glistens and the sky hangs low in. Heavy sleet shoots sideways in alternating giant snowflakes and icy raindrops. Umbrellas turn themselves inside out at the sight; you know it's miserable. The dog builds a fort in your bed and curls up, commits to a whole day of naps, while you pull up a never-ending document and ramble into the void. Some days the story teaches you of worlds yet unexplored, some days it grates at your shoulders. There's no telling how a day will go just by reading the weather report.

You sleep a restless sleep and wake in a sweat, the radiators delirious with the changing seasons. Every night you dream of mice, now, and how few of them you catch. When the alarm clock rings, too early for a Saturday but such is life in the upside down, you struggle to remember your purpose with it all. But later on the train, tired and hungry and angry with the crowds, the story whispered to you as you sat staring at mattress advertisements. It painted pictures on the insides of your eyelids, swirled bits of magic around your spine. You remember there was a phrase somewhere, a few pages back, that you really quite liked and you think someone else might understand what you were trying to say.

The road ahead didn't seem so long then, the quest not so impossible after all. There was a phrase that I really quite liked and maybe if I keep at it, there will be another again.

Marching In

The calendar turns a new leaf. You afford it too much meaning perhaps, but when you wake in the morning, does it not seem the fog has cleared from your eyes? You look at the world and do not shy away. The feeling, albeit novel, is not new: it is you.

You sit in the bay window, the quiet street dark outside and a full moon making its way across the zodiac, and suddenly the stories are all there. The words write themselves and you try to keep up, while your body turns to lead in the chair and your field of vision narrows only to the edges of the word processor. You fight to keep your eyes open because you do not want to lose the moment; it's been so long since you felt the words course through you like this and the fear of losing them again renders you desperate.

But another morning comes, and another stint in the window. The street is busy now, with students and dogs and people who have places to go, but no matter. Your field of vision shrinks, the sounds fade away, a whole other land spreads out before you and you scramble to name every creature that winks at you, commit their quotes to paper.

You're sure it was winter once, and the road you walked was desolate. But the calendar has turned a new leaf. And, blissfully, so have you.