Chipped

Oh, but it’s too many words to say, they get stuck in my throat, they get lost in the winding mountain roads, I have so much to tell you but I get caught in my own chest and let me just carry it, it’s nothing I haven’t held before. A year circles the drain, 12 months ago how cold it was but tonight the snow fell in warm drifts of powder, everything changes and yet somehow we are the same. Or perhaps we have changed and everything else remains, you cannot step into the same river twice.

I am not afraid of the change. I am not afraid of pain or of weights in this chest, I have walked through a lifetime of snowstorms, it’s only weather. A year circles the drain but another comes, not to replace it, but to build its spire on the base of all that’s come before. Dig where you stand, and soon enough you’ll reach the stars.

For So Long

It’s the way the sunlight is a little clearer, the blue sky a little crisper, it’s how your lips dry and your head buzzes with static over the silence. An alarm clock rang at four in the morning, streets empty, a warm rain on the avenues as I raced downstairs to catch a car. Do the dances you could step in your sleep and here you are: home. Or away, it doesn’t matter, I forget in an instant the metropolitan sway of my hips and lean back in the drivers seat, letting my accent sink into saccharine slowness. We have never all been gathered before; a tree stands trimmed with lights and doused with candy canes in a corner, homemade snowflakes strewn across the lower half. An anomaly. For brief moments, if you stood in the window looking in, we might appear to be happy, cradled in familial warmth and comfortable holiday cheer. And yet some moments I look at these people and wonder how any of us will make it out alive.

The truth, of course, is that none of us will. But that’s only a philosophical irony. The trick is to make it through a little better than you dreamed you could,
And to give yourself credit for dreaming
in the first place.

Storybook

A small child wrapped her hand in mine, contorted her body around our tangle not to lose it as she settled in for sleep. Ten thousand lost tourists meandered down Broadway and into tiny souvenir shops along Canal, oblivious to the pace of a speeding city, oblivious to my need to conduct errands in their vicinity without being infected with their unbelonging. I sat at a typewriter punching out a letter that didn’t know what it wanted to say when it started, but which snowballed out of my control into deep twisting rose-covered vines that spoke of love and loss and how cruel distance when lives fall apart; the open parenthesis key is jammed and every interjection I added had to be carefully considered.

He says we must pick one moment out of every day to be that day’s story. But how to pick one? Life is more often than not mundane. But how to pick just one?

Life is constantly extraordinary.

If You Only Had Time

The West Village rests. For one day, the streets are empty, the air is still. There's no traffic on 7th avenue, no deranged monologues along Cornelia Street, no pretense on Bleecker. A post-apocalyptic story amuses itself into existence in my head from a windy perch on the Christopher Street pier (do you remember, when we first came here, how different the west side was then and they had only barely swept the syringes off the docks?) while sunset dances across the monoliths. Again, again your heart grows beyond itself, the extended silence settles piles of words like snowflakes along your insides, I stumble sometimes, there's no denying it, but in the end the path always lies clear. Stick to your work, he says after I trip on ghosts of my own making, and he couldn't be more right. Stick to your work, let it prove your points to yourself. When I was seven I told my father I was going to be a writer and he said yes, I think so. The fire doesn't leave you just because you sleep well at night.

Besides, isn't it one-thirty and you're up?

Eve

Traditions return, the city empties out. Like so many years before, I find myself scaling the bridge at dusk, too early for twilight and that magic wash of color you know will come, but still. 

But still. 

Turning around halfway across, carefully treading onto the bicycle lanes, stand to look at the city. The jumble of buildings, each piece insignificant perhaps, barely recognizable on its own, but all together they create a skyline that soothes your senses, that build inside you a feeling of being complete, of being one whole person, built from years of individual pieces which in their entirety make you who you are.
You are not without the pieces, 

but you only are because of the whole of them together.

For a short moment, the late afternoon sun breaks through, scattering little bands of peach and ice blue across the glass buildings of midtown and near Queens, flecks of gold on south Williamsburg, that strange depth on brick which reminds you the city is enormous and never-ending, containing multitudes, that you are but a small piece and yet indispensable.


I thought I had loved before I came here, I thought I knew the expanse of my heart and just how large it could stretch but I have learned I knew nothing. I have learned that the heart is a muscle without limits, I have learned that love is a magic that knows no ends, as I walked back down the long slow slope back to the safe warm nook on my island, twilight arrived and changed the whole city again. I stray, sometimes, I sit too long in late afternoon dusk and forget just what lies beneath.

But don’t worry. The city will remind you when the time is right. And it'll be not like you were never lost, but like you were lost

and found your way home again. 

On Sugarplum Fairies

The Bowery rests, for a few quiet nights the streets of New York are empty. It is a gift, you unwrap it slowly, again and again, block by block. I forget sometimes all the things I have to be grateful for, forgive me.

I remember them tonight. So thank you.

Boroughs

You were in my dream last night, it was a strange dream but sweet, I woke in confusion and smiles all at once. It was too early to rise and still somehow I ended up late on the train and rushing through the underground for a day in social flurries. Arrive home at last in the late evening, full moon walking alongside me down the avenue, scour the interwebs for reasonable airfare, think about the places one can go and what they might be like. Some of them we know but they are all different now, my skin is tougher and doesn't tingle like it once did. The apartment smells of holidays. You get a break now.

You would do well to take it.

Hello

Miss the local by a heartbeat, watch the express trains ricochet past, count your late minutes. You run so quickly through your days that you forget your hunger, forget your checklists, forget the small voice at the base of your heart and what it keeps trying to say. I haven’t the time now, you tell it, but you know that is only a half truth. You haven’t the strength, you haven’t the courage, you know what it’s trying to say and you’re not yet ready to hear it. 

But don’t worry. The heart will wait. The heart outlasts every defense you set up before it. Don’t let that scare you. 

Let that give you hope. 

Love, Actually

The temperature rises, you walk through holiday street markets but hear only birdsong, something in the back of your mind remembers spring, you smile deep into your lungs at the recollection. Every day how many times you trip but at the end of it isn’t there always a reason for those smiles? Isn’t there always a way to let gratitude sweep clean the soot from inside you? I ran along the river today, slowly, my body so tired from its illnesses but so glad to be breathing again, to see the light dance across the bridges and glitter in distant skyscrapers. I know it’s confusing, love, I know you’re tired sometimes and lost in the fog, but keep breathing, put one foot in front of the other, eventually the congestion will ease from your lungs, eventually the sun will return, maybe not in the form you expected but oh it’ll shine, and you will see clearly, and for a moment there will sit in your chest a calm like you never knew you could expect, and you’ll know everything will be okay.

I know the path isn’t entirely clear.
But keep walking it.
Trust me.
All the best is yet to come.

Pull Me Out

Illness rages through my body, I sit catatonic on the bed and stare at the wall. In the shower, my legs give way, I marvel at the mechanics that keep us standing without so much as a thought to the action, I think a lot of fevered thoughts that slip away into the winter afternoon, but am unable to catch them. An established writer asks if I’m in Brooklyn and I respond only that I’m on the island, forgetting that there are a million other places I could live but New York and he wasn’t asking about boroughs. That there’s a world beyond where lives are still being lived. I go to the bar later, I know I shouldn’t but it’s the only place with enough peace to write, and find it’s the grumpy bartender on shift, but at least my table is free and she plays entire Radiohead albums without pretense. My swimming head sinks slowly to a still bottom, the intangible words that have been drifting through my cottoned head begin to cluster in coherent thoughts, I see again the magic of words — how I’ve missed the magic in all this bureaucracy of grit! — I see a new year spread out before me that does not erase the year that passed: everything builds on itself and you are only who you are because of who you’ve been, and yet that isn’t necessarily who you’ll become. 

The window is open at the bar, the boiler running rampant and uncontrollable. The sweet smell of weed drifts in. Exit music plays. You think of summer. I forget sometimes that I ever believed in magic at all, but it’s not too late to remember. It’s not too late for anything.  

Breathe

Keep breathing 

Don’t lose

Your nerve. 

Dying Is Easy, Young Man

Your head is full of fantasy, again, wild storylines run rampant around you as you navigate subway rush hours, grocery stores, chores. Illness rattles your body but it is not the cause of this delirium, you are. Even as a child your mother says you made up stories, your whole life you've been acting out dialogue you couldn't pursue in real life. Sometimes it strikes me that perhaps everyone does not do this, and I am floored. It takes me twice as long as usual to scale the stairs out of the underground, my limbs falter, my breath doesn't reach the lungs, but here we are.

But did you see the sunrise this morning? Did you take a moment today, just a moment, to stop and think how singular your life, how extraordinary the gifts you've been given? I wrap mine up sometimes, when I've forgotten to see them, truly see them, and then it's as if they arrive to me brand new, with colorful ribbon and sparkling announcement of their arrival. See me. Remember me.

I had a fight today so mesmerizing I forgot all about the laundry I was folding, all about the cold air seeping in through the crooked windows, I had a reconciliation and a trip to the moon, I know the real world requires our presence but we are there plenty. Come, play hooky with me for just a while, let's see what's around the corner.

The real world will wait
for the treasures we can bring on return.

Landfill

(Rainy Sunday, 36th floor, see both rivers in the periphery and marvel again at the cityscape around you, vintage train cars to Radio City and the bar wrapped in holiday lights, but how at the end of the day none of it matters compared to the soft, sweet rainbow of poetry that sits again on your desk, that sits again in your bony fingers, that curls and stretches and yawns its unused muscles back into existence, you look at their winding, singing letters and think you must be the luckiest girl in the world to have them fall off
your 
lips)

On Sunday Morning

An alarm rings. You’ve already dreamed of it a hundred times so it cannot hurt you now. There was a moment in the quiet evening that I heard again the soothing sounds of peace in my ear drum, it breathed around my heavy head and sank into my blood flow until I sat smiling into nothingness, I do not forget what a gift it is, not what I spent to receive it. When I step into the sleeping home, a Christmas tree lights up the dark room, everything else is still.

I’m okay.

Mantra

(if you don’t heal what
hurt you,
you’ll bleed on people
who did
not cut you)

Spela Shoreline

While you were listening, the voice says, were there any aspects of this talk you found particularly compelling? I come to, having heard none of the words that came before this. My mind is a thousand miles away, my mind is a dozen months away, my mind is lost I was hoping someone might find it but the flyers got soggy in the snow and no one could find a number to call. My roommate takes a mental health day, looks out at me from under the covers with a conference call on mute and pleads to be put out of her misery. I bring her coffee and no relief. The couple across the street have sex, winter dusk turning their brightly lit window into a showcase, into a holiday display behind lazy drifts of snow flurries, I try to write poetry but am constantly interrupted by the bobbing behind the blank sheet of paper. Her pale breasts, his unruly afro. Later, finished, or at least perhaps satisfied, I see their hands waving in the air for some post-coital conversation or other. See my own muted reflection in the window. Seven point six billion people are, at this very instant, living lives in which they are the main character, it blows you away. How life is precious, and beautiful,  and kind, and cruel, and above all short enough that you owe it to yourself to make every second count. One floor down, a man sits alone on his couch, in a messy room, looking at his phone. I fear if I do not tell all the stories inside of me I will explode, or -worse - deflate like a forgotten balloon in the corner of a birthday party.

All this to say, I forgot to say thank you
but not a second went by when I forgot to
feel
it.

Dial Down

At last it catches up with you. All day, all week, for ages it's been circling your street corner, been just outside your line of vision, you could feel it approach but catch nothing if you reached for it. For once, it is not the dark, wet blanket of winter that finally sinks its teeth in you, but a wind like a current, a moment's peace, a brief instant when the jumbled thoughts in your head all line up and you see clearly at last that which has only scared you in the unknown. I race to find pen and paper, to jot everything down, to not forget how my present and future paint themselves in my to-do lists. For too long I have been slipping, and at last I find footing. The Universe is testing me, more and more, again again, the first step is to realize you cannot rest on your laurels. He calls and I hear peace on the line, today I read a piece of poetry so precious I cried and smiled at the same time, life is gifts and daggers in a jumble, just roll with it. We speak in half truths, I know, but the wind is here now, I think I can breathe now, I'll dig where I stand and promise to unearth the other half of the truth for you; it's not perfect, but it's a start.

You are here now. What will you do about it?

Drill

I dreamed of road trips, of expansive vistas and a driver who changed course at a whim and I thought how odd but how right at the same time. A baby morphed into a puppy to great delight, the famous singer in the back of the bus squealed, I pointed out scenery as we flew.

I woke with a hangover in my heart, a muted sadness behind my eyelids. Back to reality again, and none the wiser. My dentists hugs me and says the teeth are fine, just like we agreed. The pain in his chair is a welcome relief. It’s gone when I rise, and I am better off than before.

Agains

Look at me, I'm growing, she says, as she unboxes a white Christmas tree in the already crowded West Village apartment. It's only different. The twisted monster unfolds and writhes in pastel ornaments and jaunty lights, you laugh and toast to ghosts of holidays past, it's a delicious tradition you wouldn't want to do without, even as everyone rolls their eyes and tears their hair with every year. I stare past the branches, lost in trains of thoughts that run nowhere, slowly. The walk home is cold, and just as heavy in my bones.

There was a moment, in the strange afternoon, where I sat in the emergency room of a downtown hospital, wracking my brain for morsels of light, where I thought this is what life is. We got through it after all, didn't we? But I came home with my head exploding and fell asleep before my time, and all I could think was but this isn't what I want. Sometimes the Universe doesn't leave it up to us, and then what do we do? The holiday lights sparkle regardless.

I just forget how I ever did it, myself.

All You Can Bear

Wake early, red and green lights still bright at the edge of your vision, I had so many dreams, I was reluctant to let them go. You were there, and how sweet a quiet moment between souls, it's a gift but I don't know where to put it anymore.

I took a long run along the river, Monday morning so full of sunshine and mild beauty, the waves wild but kind in that way life can be, sometimes it overwhelms me how little I know and how much I have yet to learn; the Universe holds its secrets until you are ready for them, until you can prove yourself open to whatever comes of it. I whispered my gratitude into the waves later, but I do not know more now than I did before. It seems a treacherous road to sleep more for the dreams to return.

I'd rather learn how to make them true.

Last Saw You Laughing

The country is quiet, dark, the stars come out and your breath billows like clouds from your mouth. I wander through Victorian hallways, glide my finger along banisters a hundred and fifty years in the making: how small we are on this earth, how insignificant, and yet to us how much this brief moment in times matters because it is ours. What do you wish you had done with your sliver? Remember most things will outlive you.

The little hamlet prepares for Christmas and you get a brief respite, a moment of hot chocolate and familial small-town innocence, it’s a blessing. I know New York couldn’t protect me against all the pain of a life, I knew that, didn’t I know? Maybe I was just hoping it could soften the blow. You recognize the person in the mirror again, you got your brief upstate respite, got your fresh country air and your weeks or months or however long (it was hard to keep time, then, and didn’t seem necessary) in someone else’s shoes and oh didn’t you like how they fit after all.

You wonder what the bottom looks like and if you’ll know when you hit it.

How many times you have to hit it before you allow yourself to get back up.

Marcy Ave

They put something in those chicken sandwiches that make the fear run right out of you. They put something in that beer to make your smile start at the very bottom of your belly, make you believe in the possibility of your own future, make you remember your name even when the cold wind tries so hard to blow it away.

I came home later, threw clothing in a bag like a crapshoot, there’s no telling what you’ll find when you open it again. If that doesn’t work out, something else will, he says, and you start to remember that freedom in your blood again, how right it is. I decided one day I was done with the fear of the unknown, sometimes I forget, but no matter. The road is always there when you’re ready to find your way to it again.

Mire

How you recognize it like an old friend when it arrives. For days it circles you, on the horizon, at your doorstep, just outside your line of vision, you know it is there but when you turn around the sun appears to be shining. Your steps slow, your head falls heavy on the pillow each night, you think you could sleep forever and curse how tempting the thought. And then one day it stands there, straight in front of you, unabashedly real, reaching out its hands as if to shake yours but instead plunging straight into your chest and wringing the last pulse from your cold, leaden heart. You recognize its fingerprints along your membranes, revel almost in the calm comfort of giving up, giving in, being swept away and drowned by its heavy, thick treacle, it is here at last now I needn't run from it any longer.

Winter lies dark and impossibly long ahead. You know there was something you were meant to do with your days, but you cannot for the life of you remember it now. Perhaps the secret was you were never meant to do that at all. You sit yourself down in the deep, dark, sticky mess of your convictions.

Wonder who you'll decide to be when it's time to step out.

I’ll Be Gone

Early morning along the river, it really is winter now but how beautiful it is in its cold sunrise and twirling smokestacks, the sharp contrast of glass buildings and the way pain reminds you you are alive. I sat on the train, later, and felt melancholy sink its tired teeth into my lungs. There is too much to this life, for every pour of joy there’s a tidal wave of the opposite behind it to overwhelm you.

I have to remind myself to take deep breaths now, where they used to happen on their own. I know this vise around my rib cage will let up eventually. This train is so long, is all, and I never seem to arrive where I meant to.

Oh Dear

Mild, sunny afternoon, I climb onto the fire escape to wash windows still playing at Industrial Revolution colors; dirt and grime runs in rivers down the side of the building. How quickly the money runs out when you are not paying attention. For a short moment, I wonder what the hell I'm doing, but my inner defenses shoot into formation and distract me. I dreamed last night of unexpected baby birds; today I hung Christmas lights and imagined what the season would be like with a little family braided around my sentiments, what a peculiar idea, I found myself surprised at the prospect.

The Mystery swirls and builds. The sun rises and sets. You hold on for dear life, marvel at the sharp turns.

Try to remember only the bits where you laugh.

Impostor

Some words come too easily, some sleights of hand seem natural when they fall out of your muscles, you sit in a dark bar and wonder at your own poker face. She sits on a couch in your own home, speaking of hospital staff and assault procedure, of the secondary trauma in taking your experience seriously, I started crying in the shower today so maybe I'm not ready to leave my room yet. Voices come from across the ocean, weaving tapestries of the pain of being alive. All you can think is that if it was to be so often this hard, shouldn't the good have been easy to hold on to? There's an answer in there somewhere, you weren't meant to find it yet.

We spent the day 40 floors up, looking at the skyline of a skyscraping metropolis and dancing our feelings into reality.

It's been too many nights with
to now suddenly be without

Easy

Navigate the trains like you knew them, navigate the streets like you want them in your bloodstream. The bourbon sinks deep but none of it mattered, at the base of my spins sits only a whisper, sits only the secret knowledge that a story moves on, moves out of my hands and into the world. I tried to tell him what the Universe had shown me but the world is too large, the life too beautiful. When I say I love you it cannot possibly mean all the things I want it to, but please know that my veins flow differently now because of all the things we are, and all the things we have yet to be, that must mean something in the great Mystery. A story moves on, moves through me and that is the secret after all; we are the river, and all things that are to come will flow through us even as we move. I had the answer once but this drink will do for now, I squander my tips on the F train, all roads lead you home
if you let them.