Bless

Return to the island to find it sweeter than you left it: the evening like velvet, the trees lush but the air breathing like it still can in May. I went for a run in the twilight, the sky in peach fire behind me and the river like silver ahead. Skyscrapers in New York take on a blue gleam all their own in early summer sunsets, you had forgotten what it felt like but the sensation greeted you like an old relative you love without question. The warm night grew beads of sweat on my brow that turned into rivers along the small of my back, I took long, light steps and looked at the moon, let the twinkling lights of the Chrysler building guide me home eventually, turned on a happy song and danced all the way into the numbered avenues.

My heart is breaking, make no mistake, my flesh bleeds and bleeds and tries to put itself together again crookedly, I stumble each morning when I remember the weights around my ankles, but it is spring now, the world lives again, and somewhere, somehow, so do I. The magic of May is stronger than my pain, the power of life anew beats in my lungs, runs in my veins, screams in every hair along my arm; I want to throw out everything that is dead, clean this room, clean this mind, a whole new book told itself to me while I ran and all I want is to sit at that typewriter and pound furiously into the silver Manhattan nights while the street corner sweats outside, I want to see the world and smile at strangers, I endured an entire cold dark winter but spring is here now, I am here now, and try as I might I cannot stay indifferent to the fireworks of the season.

We suffer so long. We've earned the right to dance a little.