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.)