Don't Seem so Worth It

A cold front sweeps in across the city, a confusion of rain and snow, darkness in daytime. For a short moment this morning I woke with a lightness in my chest, but I lost it somehow, it slipped through my fingers as the long, heavy arm of the Darkness caught me again, reminded me my place. I found a penny in the street today but what good are pennies against a thousand bricks. I forget how to breathe again. A ticket lies panting in my inbox, like a fish washed ashore trying desperately to stay alive until the wave, except the tide is toxic, I've started having nightmares now even hibernating until spring can't save this.

The same procedure as last year?
The same procedure as every year, James. 

Namaste

Deep breath in, a woman’s voice says right in my ear, exhale slowly out through the mouth. I mimic motions I should know how to do, actions I have theoretically done since I first was born, and somehow they now seem impossible. My lungs have sought employment elsewhere, my rib cage turned to stone and refuses to give even a little. This room is covered in sticky inertia, dragging me down and back, it suspends me mid air. Everyone can see it, it’s that car accident you swerve to avoid, it’s that commotion in the street where you hope someone else will take it upon themselves to call authorities. It’s a cast iron decoration atop my eyebrows, which sink into the hollows of my eyes, and I can’t stand in the shower anymore.

Flip through old notebooks for clues and find only the same song on repeat, isn’t it getting old. How desperately you want to protect those around you from the avalanche, how you overcompensate, how you hide. Would that I could write a new story, that we could erase the incessant returns to this particular narrative, I dreamed I was drowning and woke as if paralyzed, I wish it was enough to know this too shall pass, because it will pass and my body won’t remember a time when my lungs wouldn’t widen, my eyes wouldn’t open, I survive only by forgetting, I suppose the same could be said for a lot of things. It’s just this isn’t a metaphor.

(Noted)

(How dull, the days in January, I live my days in parentheses, I live my days at the bottom of a pond frozen over, year after year the same narrative, I forget to even look for the surface, much less move toward it, everything passes and this, too, but I haven't looked you in the eyes for days and I don't know how to make myself,
forgive
me)

of Mercy

(I spend
my days
in a daze now
all poetry and words and magic I
forget
the time of day forget
the clothes on my body leave
to do lists unchecked on the floor.
My bank account starves,
my bed remains unslept in I
ran out of bourbon miles ago
but earlier today I turned a phrase that
aligned my spine
that tasted like home on my tongue and I
never
want to do anything else.)

Hold

(I crossed the avenue at third street last night. I wasn't going home, I was only passing through, it wasn't my intention. But just north, on the corner, there's a deli, and a tall brick building a hundred years old. All the lights were out in the homes, and the house stood dark against the night sky. But on the third floor, a window was lit by a little paper star, its quiet light glowing as if whispering your home is here. 
It had never occurred to me to look at my own apartment from the outside before, yet there it was, unapologetic, steadfast, warm. In a dark building on a New York City street corner lies a space that is mine even when I am not in it, and maybe that's what home is. 
They say you carry it with you, 
but maybe home is what carries you.)

for Nothing

Return to fifth street, reclaim the seat I have made mine at the back of the bar only to find a deep crack in the window above it. Arctic gales rush in. The bartender with the right playlist is back, and I settle in to the din of New York City, to the soothing comfort that is its companionship. An old manuscript opens itself in my lap, weaves stories a decade in the making, sings songs of an entire lifetime and I feel at home in the knowledge that I am exactly where I should be. Because when I said I’d sacrifice every other happiness if only I could write, I knew what I was doing. You didn’t think I did, I wasn’t so sure myself, but you see there are fireworks in my chest today just bursting to get out, but you see we passed a turn of phrase earlier so sweet it could make you cry, and I think if I could spend a lifetime in this far corner of this nondescript bar telling stories into the world I won’t mind so much the fraying of my clothes, the wild of my hair, the madness in my eye. I think if I can’t have the other happinesses anyway, I might as well burn straight into meaning
like this.

des Cygnes

The temperature drops forty degrees in an afternoon, as a super wolf blood moon prepares its entrance. You sit trapped in a prison of your own cold limbs, turned inert by the ice, the music in my ears speak of hundred degree days as I stare frozen into the wall. The windows are attempts at best, a rush of wintery air sweeps in from between their cracks. She says how is it this year? and you reply only that you are alive, and that'll do. Shouldn't your people have figured out how to endure winter, by now?

They speak of your work like it's real and you wonder at the prospect. See the paths of others light up and arrange themselves on the map. The full moon lingers in the shadow of the earth, simmering in a deep orange glow. Stars peer out in the darkness. I hoist my backpack back on my shoulders, take a deep breath.

Carry on trudging through the forest, hoping the path may appear in my wake.

Persistence of Vision

Rainy Saturday nights on the Lower East Side, I sit at the windowsill in my underwear while the radiator falls over itself in a fit of efficacy at my feet. Page after page flies off the typewriter, I forget to think but my raging hands do the work for me, beating the machine into the plaster of the sill, so recently repainted and now all scuff marks and dents. I yelled into the blank pages all the twists and turns of a life, of a winter, of the persistent black rain on the avenue, the music crescendoed as my poetry crested, a ship at the top of a wave, a curious vessel in the midst of a storm, they say the middle of a hurricane is entirely still, but I don't know if I believe in quiet anymore, I think we are all just wildfires with
the
lid
on. 

say I'm Going

Frozen noses, frozen toes (the frozen city starts to glow), a thousand bodies tremble at the end of an island, and it seems impossible that every year is more dystopian than the last and yet here we are with more exasperation in our lungs than ever. We talk about living in the mountain, and you remember only how warm the sun was on your bare skin at the back of that school bus, how the silence was yours, how you were not lonely, only invincible. January paces around you like a hungry lion, but you remain somehow, as if by magic, untouchable. Because what winter doesn't realize is that in its violent thrashings of death lies the reminder of life, because in its threat of how little time I have, lies the reminder of how precious the time that remains. If I must perish in its darkness, let me just weave one last poem, one last magic thread of art before I go.

The typewriter in my window is cold, and the red wine in my glass is cheap, but they are mine alone. I can breathe them back to life.

I can set them all on fire.

A Lot of Oysters

(if you think that I could be forgiven, 
I wish you would)

He says it's raining on the west coast, in the land of perpetual sunshine, and how much he enjoys it.

I book a ticket to Mexico.

My to do lists are covered in checked boxes and still nothing looks different on the surface. She writes to say for one brief moment in the late afternoon she imagined a life without him and believed it would be okay. I was shocked, she writes, and then it was over. Life walks us through mazes to get where we're going, but the only way to get anywhere is to keep moving. I write a list of all my failures, flesh them out, categorize, color code. Because I asked the Universe for an opportunity to fail up, and all I did was fall, forgetting to do the work of climbing out of the hole where it shoved me, forgetting part two of the process.

But I'm taking the reins now, do you hear me? I'm draining the dirty blood out of my veins and setting these lungs on fire. I'm improving the fuck out of this tattered soul, just you try and stop me.

with Butterfly Wings

Sorry, wrong person, the words read across the screen after a link pops up above it. I thought you said you deleted numbers after things ended and yet here we are, I think, but reply only with smiles and a wave of the hand. I've started turning off my phone in the mornings, no one is trying to reach me then who cannot wait. It draws the walls closer, grates at my lungs, but experts say it's good for your health. This desk drowns in books of poetry, it's a disease, why is no one stopping the deluge, I am clearly powerless on my own; it's just these words breathe for me when I cannot do it myself, it's just when you've decided to live you still need a game plan, there's a bookstore in Woodstock I cannot pass now without blushing, the words won't tell. 

There's a candle lit in my window that smells of man, the packaging said nothing of that, said nothing to the visions it would conjure of naked bodies or early mornings or my lips tingling involuntarily, how humans can build such complex ideas of themselves and still be reduced into only bodies with one breath. 

The point I'm trying to make is that I found an answer today, buried beneath so many sheets of paper, buried within so many layers of protective clothing around my heart, it lay gasping like the humbling piece of truth it was, and like most truths it wasn't very pretty, and like most truths when I put it on I didn't entirely enjoy my reflection in the mirror, but when I put it on, my steps along the river were lighter, when I tasted it on my tongue I smiled in a way I haven't done since the cherry blossoms exploded in Brooklyn, and I think if you took all these words off my desk it wouldn't matter because 

my 

supplies

are

infinite. 

It's Only

It's only January, you yell to yourself as the mud gets thick around you. Stand at a fossilized skeleton in a Natural History Museum and explain to a preschooler what sediment is, how these great strong animals were struck down in silt, buried in the mulch, how it covered them and buried them and peeled their skin away. How they surrendered. 

I think (every year I think) these depths are new, I am surprised at the stranglehold around me, I marvel at my misfortune, how I latch on to fears and this black hole in my chest, forgetting (every year forgetting) that it is only January dragging its wet blanket across my eyelids, dragging my leaded body down the slope to Charon, like so many dying cells. It is only January that proceeds to strangle the breath from my withering body. They say the snow is coming this week but one day spring will return again, one day I will remember what it is to breathe again and perhaps all these boulders I call jagged obstacles will turn out to be stepping stones, will turn out to be dust shadow and in fact I was fine all along, I just couldn't see it for all the dark poison in my eyes. 

January is only a collection of stumbles, you remind yourself. It drags you across shards of broken glass painted to look like your own reflection but remember: it's only a nightmare. 

When it is time, you will wake up 

and everything 

will turn out 

okay. 

Sunshine

(sometimes, there is so much to say
that the voice is rendered mute

be patient
it's only biding its time)

Moonstruck

There’s a moment of every day
when you forget yourself entirely

You don’t see it until later

But it’s a blessing.

The Things You Can't Forget

The clouds amass, you can smell snow on the wind; on the screen, a distant poet says How the hell am I supposed to write anything in all this sunshine, it makes you smile despite the brick in your chest. It's only weather until it breaks you.

I ran along the river in solitude, the cold etching salmon-colored blossoms along my skin, numb to the thoughts which kept me up through the night (which keep me up through the winter). Not until I reached the ferry terminal did I thaw, as the questions and answers of a life tumbled through my innards, looking to connect. We stood on that ferry in the freezing dark: I told him how I would ride it back and forth across the bay because I couldn't afford therapy, and he replied that it made sense, you with your thing for the sea. It wasn't untrue. The sea which calms me, which centers me, which reminds me how all things come, and go, how we are only pieces in a greater scheme. The water was ominous then, black and shiny like oil, tossing around the boat. I whispered my reassurances to the approaching skyline. If it heard, it said nothing.

By the time I had reached the foot bridge that signals the end of my run, that tells me I may rest and returns me to reality, all the answers had connected, in that magical way they do when your muscles have nothing left to give. Hearts will always bleed, it is what they were meant to do, and who are you to be above it. But if you must bleed, bleed in poetry.

If you must ache, ache with purpose.

On New Years

(I was a young writer, and I wanted to take off. Somewhere along the line I knew there'd be girls, visions, everything; somewhere along the line the pearl would be handed to me.)

Poesy

Rows upon rows of pigeons along the rooftops of PS363, lining up, arranging and rearranging the empty spaces, gauging the wind, what do pigeons have to worry about? What nostalgia do they battle, what fear of death, what dreams of self-actualization? January lies thick around them, and no place is as gray as New York City in winter; this they know. (This we all know, and somehow we remain, masochists to our own self-flagellation, beating purpose and meaning into our suffering souls, staring smugly at everyone outside the city's border, who couldn't hack it if they tried.) The pigeons do not give a fuck.

The new year tries so hard still to shine and shimmer with novelty and promise, but oh how quickly it fades into grime and is buried under winter. Swelling anger chased me all the way down the river promenade (which they have vowed to shut for years to raise a wall and protect us all from the surge, is that really the way). Monsters of all my failures, of all that which failed me, screamed and stabbed and tore the flesh from my insides, how I was slowed by all these weights I carry, why do I never consider getting rid of them until the moments when they drown me. Finally, somewhere under the FDR, newly painted lavender but still cavernous, I stopped in my tracks, let my breath catch up, let the stitch in my side hold me, let the dark storm pummel me, and I realized there is only one answer.

Love. In defiance, in resistance, as a great big fuck you to any force of destruction, to that which tears down, even if it is yourself. Because while love may hurt you, everything else will break you. And the year is too new still, to break.

(The rest of the way home was lighter, then, the pigeons long since gone from the bricks and my spine straight against the avenues. A voice in my ear said all critics can suck this, and somehow it was just what I had wanted to tell myself, but had forgotten how.)

La La Land

A day comes and goes in airports, in mechanical failures and hours of wait. A small child with my same color eyes says he’ll bring his toolbox and fix the engine, but to no avail. Return through the mountain pass to the sparkling valley, drag the sludge to the surface and look at it from different sides, watch your words because once they are out they do not fit back in: life is hard but don’t cheat yourself out of doing your best. I sat later under the bright night sky again. The meteor showers over, I had to wait a long time for a shooting star, but when at last it passed, how brightly I smiled in return. I’m afraid there’s something wrong with me, she wrote, and I’m not sure I’m possible to love. The new year drags us already through the mud, through the ice, I sat on an airplane watching California palm trees dancing and thought that’s enough of the dreaming. If the new year gives no reprieve, I will give none in return. America I’m putting my queer shoulder to the wheel. America I’m hitting the road right back.

of Being

Is this what it is to be alive? she asks, in a steady stream of questions against the sunny afternoon. Sometimes it feels like Life is just a succession of losses. How can one ever bear all this sorrow? My answers all grew into empty-handed platitudes, because the truth is I don’t know.

I sat on the patio again later, staring at the brilliant night sky and breathing myself back into being. Just as I began to speak with the universe, to remind us both that we were okay, a small star streaked across the darkness. And another. And another. It’s a strange thing to feel so utterly small and yet so immensely alive all at once.

Life is sad, and terrible, and breaks you when you are down, without reprieve. But the fact that you are alive is an entire miracle all on its own, and every good step you take beyond that is a gift you give yourself. The losses, they add up, they line your bedside and sit on your shoulder, but they are only a piece of the puzzle. Merely a fragment of who you are. You carry them with you, yes.

But how else would you know where you wanted to go?

Sheep

Remember to take a moment, he says, to see where you are and whom. I sat in the dark corner of a closet in a room that wasn’t my own, staring at the carpet and trying to hear the words not only in my head but also in my chest. Remember you are happy. I cried then, despite myself, and felt somehow the impossibility of growing tendrils beneath my heavy heart, of small rays of sunshine that will not be discouraged by winter or by the persistent pummeling of ghosts of Christmas past. There is sunshine in these veins that found a way to grow, and flourish, and be better than it ever thought possible, how could you ever forget that, what a disservice.

A voice travels across the ocean. Says, you wrote a book. Let’s talk. And the thing is, it’s true.

It’s a new year, but it’s not a new you. It’s the fruits of all your labors. It’s a year for answering the questions, or asking the new ones, it doesn’t matter which because those tendrils will keep climbing toward the light regardless. Just water them with your curious breath, your adventurous spirit, trust in all that which you have packed in this suitcase, it will not fail you.

It is you, you know.

New

Dark, cold winter night, I sat on the patio staring at the stars and speaking with the universe. A star shot across the valve; I thought, what’s the point of wishing on these stars, of picking up these pennies, what has all this wishing brought me? How heavy the heart in my chest then, how empty the quiet, dark night.

I sat a little longer, a million stars twinkling above me, more and more the longer I looked at them, and I knew. The universe had already done its part, it already brought me. It gave me a great gift even as I am small and insignificant. I have to do the rest now, I have to gather these pennies and pay them forward, the world does not owe me anything I do not already owe in return. There’s a magic in the creative life I have only barely sensed at the edges; there’s a strength in love you only reach after drowning in your fears and surviving.

January lies heavy and dark at your feet. But if you only remember to look up, there’s a Universe full of stars in your eyes.

2019

A year begins. A screen lights up with relentless cheer for hours across the time zones. We shot the fireworks off lopsided so they illuminated cars and driveways and everything is a laugh. Leave a year behind, welcome a new. Clean out some slates, I wish you nothing but the best, goodbye, and I’ve seen the mouth of this canyon a million times but it still takes my breath away, how overwhelming is life and yet you scramble for the meaning.

A blank page lies before you and yet already how many stories are on it. I’ll deal with you in the morning, a voice whispers. It’s the best thing anyone’s said all year.