Hudson

Ma’am this is Penn Station, your train leaves outta Grand Central, you better hurry. I groan, roll my eyes at myself, calculate transit times and run off east, a sweaty mess barreling into the cool vast waiting hall of the Terminal with surprisingly much time to spare as I fall into a window seat laughing. Soon, the sharp contours of Harlem brownstones give way to rusty iron bridges and lush creeping vines, before the wilderness of the north reveals itself in all its rural bliss. The land feels untouched, instantly, you imagine the view of early explorers or native inhabitants not far different from your view as you roll along the river to a sweet retreat, you breathe differently, it’s a gift and you’ll take it. A lifetime ago over two calendars you spotted overlapping travels and asked for mutual Touchdowns in the middle; now you don’t know what to do with the space you carved out, it sits there like a weight on your chest and makes it harder to breathe. The train passes Poughkeepsie and you remember a mad train ride with the dilapidated youth of yesteryear, how innocent, how sweet. Everything I love I leave, you told him, and it would be years before you were proven wrong, you loved to leave, you didn’t stop for anyone. Until you did.

My head swims in poetry lately, it cools my fevered brow, it softens the punch lines. I tried a turn of phrase on my tongue last night and it made me smile. We build our lives morsel by morsel, when the towers topple over we begin again. Select carefully which of the pieces we know will make it to the next.