the Dark on Its Tail

Next time you see me
well I'll be someone else

The heat wave rolls in, covers the city in sundresses and sweaty iced lattes, knocks out all sense of propriety and the sidewalk is quiet until sundown when the madness erupts. I break my sobriety over guitar chords that will never cooperate but it doesn't harm me. Nothing can harm me now.

It is summer, it is sunshine, one wintry morning I asked the Universe for a challenge, for an opportunity to fail up and it delivered, who am I to blame the Universe for giving what I demand? My shoulders are brown, my smile sneaks out when I'm not paying attention, a heat wave rolls in but somewhere soon an ocean is waiting for me, if only I keep putting one foot in front of the other.

I got stuck for a moment, forgive me, I usually don't lose my way without a life jacket, I haven't left or changed I just cleaned some things out of my closet but don't worry, I kept everything that matters, even when it drags its nails across the tender walls of my heart. I still bleed, rivers of it all the time, but my shoulders are brown and my body is strong, somewhere the ocean lies waiting and I failed in ways I never could have imagined, so that is done.

It means the only way to go now is up.

And All Your Moves

We’re buying an apartment on 6th street! she  says like a sunbeam and forgives him barely for having told you first. They stumble over each other describing backyards and two-bedroom potential and you tell them how you adore that block and that the florist on the corner is a legend. When they leave, the tingle of moving stays with you, the potential of Newness, the buzz of stripping everything you own to its core and bringing only the bits that you like. Build a new map for yourself to stand on, a new person for you to stand in, the world is yours for the taking. I have allowed myself to sit in the mud, and I know it, I see the complacency spread in my veins like an old map where the lines are all outdated. I weigh my coins and consider my options.

Adventure is out there.

But you have to step into the current to catch it.

Bent

The mouse runs across the room in a panic, but sits comfortably staring at me under the radiator when it knows I can't reach it. They're clever, these vermin, how they keep you up at night with a racing heart and bleary eyes. I chase it into the closet, it's a farce, it scrambles over piles of shoes while I hang off the side of the bed trying to figure out how to guide it to somewhere - anywhere - else in the apartment. A few times I consider surrender, handing over the room and sleeping on the couch, at least for now, at least while it's two in the morning and maybe tomorrow I can handle it better.

But I do not.

When rodents gnaw their way into your blood stream, you do not give up and give in. Not anymore. The Universe is telling you to make lemonade, even when it's two in the morning and you're quite sure you can't handle it.

The mouse sleeps in my room, but so do I, and I do not run. If I come out of this a little better than before, perhaps it is worth the trouble.

List

The river was beautiful, tonight. Twilight twinkled in the glass windows across the water, a full moon rose above pink skies between the bridges, Midtown Manhattan gleamed wistfully at the horizon. I took steps so long I could have covered the whole island without getting tired, landed finally on a warm rock and watched fireflies dancing at my feet. This life is a dream.

All I wanted was the ocean today. I pretend I can wish it for you and that will be enough; perhaps one day it will be. Every day is an endless rollercoaster: when the drop at the bottom sinks stones in my belly I wonder how I'll ever endure without breaking, and I think perhaps it best to step off now and resign myself to the mire. But then the moment of weightless respite comes and briefly I see blue skies and fireflies in the corners, this life is a dream and once or twice I wrote a line so beautiful I thought someone else surely must have written it, it's only life. Today crossing Avenue A I found a copper penny heads up in the street, melted into the asphalt, I thought some luck you can't take with you, it's not yours alone, but I know it's there. The Universe knows better than to owe you anything.

But if it leaves you a twilight, a full moon, the scent of lilies or the right song at the right time, if it winks at you with these little gifts, take them.

It's still up to you to figure out what you can make them do.

Rattle

The streets are awash with rainbow glitter and unbridled enthusiasm. A year ago I stood crying on an AirTrain with a drag queen's gold paint on my shoulder; it's a strange time of year, I didn't make the rules, I barely know how to play. I stumbled home drunkenly along Houston; we fell into a hole in the wall for a night cap no one needed, but our shared words nestled like little gifts in my pocket and fell out on the floor before I passed out on the bed, sprinkling shimmer onto the cool sheets beneath the AC.

The years amass with all the same questions, all the same determination and road maps. I waver in all the same ways. But I remain on the path: the strange, crooked one full of thorns and blind corners, the one that doesn't seem to make sense to the sensible people around me but which to me is the only one worth walking. When they ask who it is I'm trying to be, the answer hasn't changed.

Adventure beckons in the margins. It never forgot how to call my name.

Divide and Conquer

I found a four-leaf clover today.

I didn't even mean to stop at that particular stretch along the river, but what a long run it had been, how my muscles screamed for reprieve, I run and run and can't get myself to stop lately, it keeps my head above the water's edge. I wasn't even looking, but there it was, waiting. Not pretty, or even, like you see in pictures, a genetic mutation, a deformity, four leaves on an unassuming sprout meant only to have three, we're the ones who turned them into magic. I had been asking for a sign, and did not the Universe oblige? Blessings will not look perfect when they come, life is not perfect, luck is not always immediately clear. Buy your own goddamn tickets. I gave away a four-leaf clover once, and I do not regret it. Do you hear me? I regret none of this.

Last night, the sun set over the water in a million pink hues; it made the skyscrapers sparkle, it made the bridges hum, last night I smiled despite myself, it was the longest day of the year and now it turns to darkness but I am not afraid of the dark, I am not afraid of anything. One day you will dance with your demons,

you'll know what I mean.

Departure

The bar was loud, already, but the back room quiet, as we tried to dissect the last few months and our places in them. This bar where at the table in the corner I said the last kind words to a lover who did not deserve them. This bar where at the short end near the door my starry eyes renewed vows to a lover I thought I'd never have to lose. I washed the streets with your name and dared to believe I wouldn't regret it. She writes to say the city has broken her, but you don't understand what she means. I still walk in to this bar with my back straight, these streets still carry me home.

What's to regret about that?

Swelter

By the time the train reaches Newark, the flash rain is upon us, drenching the train and creating puddles like oceans between the tracks. Arrive at cool, quiet Penn Station and take an extra train just to stay underground, the homeless congregating in the tunnels to wring out their soaked belongings. Omnia mea mecum porto. When I at last must face the downtown streets, the storm has passed and all that remains is steam, rising from the asphalt and lingering on my skin. My AC still stuffed in a closet, I pass out in a sweltering jungle of a room, and the heat wakes me through the night from all manner of dreams, strange but not unpleasant.

She tells me how to play the game now so I win but I’m not looking for a trophy. He tells me you must be blind but none of the care consoles me. I stood in an abandoned parking lot in South Williamsburg one warm day and knew that I was losing everything, that it was disappearing like grains of sand between my fingers and trying to catch them would be like caging a proverbial bird. I have whispered my what ifs long enough.

I speak only with the Universe directly, now. If my soul is clear enough, I reckon I can will it to listen.

Little Silver

She greets you at the train with that California sunshine of hers that never wore off, with the endless enthusiasm that even a lifetime of heartache and a spring of orphanage couldn’t erase from her smile. She cries by the ocean and whispers her what ifs into the sand, but you have 20 years between you and tears never scared the affection from your hearts. The sea heals you, you let the waves wash you over again and again until the life guards tell you you can’t handle it. You want to explain to them the extent of all the things you can handle, but you owe no one proof but yourself.

It’s a perfect summer day, New Jersey sparkles and warms you with feeling you did not expect to have. The country is beautiful, how high the sky and light the air to breathe, but at the end of the day how you long for those streets which are yours.

Truths appear from behind the veil of my mourning. Not everything is pretty: but everything is real. I regret nothing, you know. I never will.

It is not life if we are not forever in awe of its mysteries.

Rumor Has It

The world is so beautiful, lately, it glitters and gleams for my attention: the sharp lines of familiar buildings, the soft waves of greenstreets in bloom, my brain fires off synapses left and right for art that remains uncreated. It builds around me like a tidal wave preparing to unleash its wild currents but I spend my days catatonic on the bed. I took out my camera to at least remember how the city primps and preens, but I found it filled with images of simpler times, when life was beautiful through no effort at all and the rest of our life lay at our feet. Is this all there is now? I don't recognize my face in the mirror. Or perhaps I recognize it all too well, and that's the problem. Everything is different, now. How can I possibly pretend I'm the same?

The Years

New York swelters, your high heels click, clack all the way to Chinatown and you couldn't catch a cab here to save your life in the 80s so you try to remind her that the city hasn't stuck around in the dream they once lived. We got all the cabs our heart could desire, but we can no longer afford to live where they go. I turn my days and nights around in whirls of alcohol, into fits of giggles with people who actually love me until I forget to stare into space and see the inevitable void that lies there. Flashes of your insignificance slap you upside the head at random moments, in a stairwell, in the middle of a conversation, when the hangover drags across your temples and you're too weak to counter their seemingly reasonable arguments. She speaks of grit and you wonder now if you have any idea what that is, all you've done is spend a life surviving.

I sleep straight across the bed, now, and wake with my feet hanging off the edge while my shoulder aches. I don't know what sort of anodyne I expected it to be. I'm just trying spend my days
surviving.

Out

(The air by the river is mild,
thick with summer,
the last of the sunset dances
across the 
bridges, 
the rats are out in force, 
the flowers fight a sweet battle
of 
scents,
Loisaida cradles those 
faithful to it, 
it is only life. 

It occurs to me that maybe I am not the boat drifting
apprehensively
in the eye of the hurricane. 

It occurs to me that maybe 
I am
the storm.) 

Rubber Plans

I feel it coming now, as the dust settles. I feel the Darkness gather steam on the horizon, it rumbles and hisses as it builds, as it prepares for its descent. I find myself lost at sea, an insignificant speck on a tragic little dinghy, bopping along the edge of the swell with a brave face, I am zoomed out to infinity. Everything quiet, my body lies motionless on this bed and refuses to move for fear of waking the monsters that have yet to stir, but it is to no avail. They smell the opportunity a thousand miles away, they see the crack in your armor, the years you've spent building this brick house mean nothing now that it turns out to be made of straw. You surrounded yourself with fire because you thought it would light your sparkl and now you see it burn your bones to the ground.

I sat in a small room without windows today, a soundproofed refuge in midtown madness, I padded it with beauty and thought I'd land in relief, but I felt nothing. The Darkness does not care for your homespun remedies, it laughs at your pathetic attempts to keep it at bay. It tears through your own speeches and finds the poison you've hidden within. When the hurricane comes, you will drown.

You will drown.

The only way out
is through.

Donate

A kind breeze sifts through your window: everything is kind, lately. The way your roommates linger in the living room, the way your phone is a constant stream of conversation, the way the sunshine manages to somehow be the perfect amount of beautifully bearable. The city is soft around you, even as you are hard in return. I sat at a bar yesterday releasing a storm to blank pages, but strangers still stuck their comforting smiles into my confusion and I stumbled home grateful again. It is too soon, yet, to make anything of anything; I put one foot in front of the other and try to leave it at that.

A world lies in wait beyond your line of vision.

You wish you cared to open your eyes.

Mercer

One late night in Chelsea, in a quiet living room while everyone sleeps, you sit staring at twilight over your beloved Manhattan monoliths: the city is so beautiful lately it's painful, it pulls out all the stops for you and you accept without question. The pillars of support around you mobilize; your heart grows beyond the chasms that cut through it, beyond the lead that sits in your chest and you smile despite yourself. I sang today so the walls shook, but at the end of each day, my mind is silent. A dictator grins on the screen; everything is relative.

There's an answer that eludes you. But it is out there. You carry the question gently in trembling hands, put one foot in front of the other, remind yourself to breathe. I remain. And when I let myself sit and look at it, everything is still magic.

and No Surprises

The river looks different from this shore, gentle, blue, whispering secrets it knows but not you, not yet. You make a note to find out. Later, the air is warm but not imposing, a familiar wind from the west but entirely unknown, you lose your direction but do not feel lost. It's late and you are anything but tired.

Maybe this is how it starts.

Re:fuge

Why, yes, he said, I know of a cure for everything: salt water.

Salt water? I asked him.

Yes, he said, in one way or the other. Sweat, or tears, or the salt sea.

the Sweetness

The bad news is, your teeth are perfect, your dentist laughs as he sends you on your way. It seems a cruel joke, and you ask the Fates what gives, but they have no answers. It's June and I'm still wearing sweaters.

A young man, hat in hand, stepped up to me in the laundromat today as I was matching socks, asking about a job. Maybe I should have pretended the authority was mine to hire him. I cried later, over fitted sheets, but the fault was not his; it happens. My mother calls to ask for advice, I am all advice lately, my heart grows and grows but it bleeds me dry, what gives.

Life is not easy, but it is beautiful in all its flawed hopefulness and blissful ignorance. It is not over until it is over, and I have a few years in me yet. I cried at the laundromat but I smiled at the river, be patient and tough,

some day this pain will be useful to you.

Catch Me If You Can

I wear out my limbs, one by one to silence the voices, it's a comfort that it works. Summer sings as the sun sets over Brooklyn, the breeze is light in the trees, the gift is not lost on you. We sat on the roof above the 18th floor and looked at the city as it spread out around us, so many years later and it still takes my breath away every time I let it. I traced the streets, pointing out buildings we knew, parks and street corners, how the stories of our past paint maps on top of the grid. Love beams and grows in my chest at every turn. I have begun looking at apartment listings again; it soothes me. Back at home, we sit on the couch gossiping through another movie night, the choices of what you have to gain and what to lose have never been clearer.

Choose your moves with care. It is not the same as with fear.

Textbook

You wake freezing, cold rain rushing in through an open window and so many alarms missed. The entire icy season seems sprung out of your suffering heart; you are a sitcom cliché despite yourself. Your roommates drag you out to watch silly old musicals, how you adore their kindnesses. You forget to eat again, the heart breaks and breaks and lives by breaking, the little candle burns and burns unperturbed.

Your typewriter sits steady on the windowsill, ready for what storms may come. But the words are missing, lately, and you don't know how to get them back.

Note to Self

Do not look at things
that still live
and imagine them
tombstones,
relics in the museum of your
past

It's okay to hold 
this candle still

When it blows out, 
you will know

Hopeless Wanderer

Two oceans and a continent away, static connections and a mild lag before once known lines come into relief. See your own face contort into familiar reactions, hear conversations take the usual turns, shake your head at how nothing changes with the years. Call me later, I'll show you sunrise on the ocean, he says, and you think that the sea could heal any wound within you. I'd send you a ticket, but it always was impossible to get you out of New York.

You hang up and call your dentist.

Remember that you can buy your own goddamn tickets, and maybe it's about time you did.