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.
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