By Popular Demand

Hold up
They don't love you like 
I love you

Early morning, step into Gitane, quiet in the morning and still half relic with sleepy eyes but gleaming at the edges like it knows its worth. You have to remember your diamond self, she admonishes, and only surround yourself with those who do. This place was made for smoking indoors. A strange voice but familiar face steps in, fast friends you both talk a mile a minute about art and life and the beauty of growing into yourself before it's off to the next. My head swims with the reminder of all there is to do: winter convinces me all is lost and dead and withered, but spring sets my soul on fire anew. I haven't time to fuck around with useless drivel, there is art to create, and sunshine to reflect, there is a life to live and a road to travel, what are we standing around here for, are you in or nah? I'm going regardless, so now you must decide if you dare to jump. My hands are full of diamonds.

Step the fuck up.




 

Virescence

It’s here. It’s here. Tree branches all knobby with approaching buds. Me with my early morning eyes open staring at dawn, it’s a different light and you know it as it lands on your tongue but not before. Take long, soothing runs along inviting rivers, stop to look at flowers because somewhere in our hearts we are all six years old a little bit. Every night so tired but it’s only pollen in your lungs it’s only your body paused for so long it’s forgotten how the machinery works when the fuel is joy. I smile in the streets at strangers again just you try and stop me. There’s a seat at this table with my name on it and I haven’t eaten in months bring it on.

on Bond

I wake in the middle of the night, already afraid of being late. In my dreams, horrible events in deep dungeons reenact impending holocaust; what is my unconscious trying to say of bravery? I did not do well. When my alarm rings, it is still dark out, dawn crawling like a long, slow, stretch into morning, and everything is silent. Ride a reverse commute in stillness, the sun rises over Brooklyn and everything smells like coffee.

We sit in silence, committing to our arts and dreams and a moment of solitary companionship. A young girl stands on my blank page, reaching out a hand and asking for a boost. I remember again a land that built itself inside me, characters I've loved and places I thought I'd take us all when the time was right.

The time is always right. And for the first time in months, again I am too.

Fare

The words evade me, lately. Spring simmers, lets the little blossoms make their way out of the soil and into my beaming heart, fills the river promenade with all manner of revelers, everything is easier and I begin to recognize my face in the mirror. But left behind in the dusty tar of February, it seems, lies all the poetry that ran in my blood while the days were dark, lie scattered the words that gathered and built like plaque in my arteries, stiffening my every move except the one that put ink on blank pages, one after another, after another.

I forget to look for magic on the street corner, I forget to wink at the Universe to see if it winks back, somehow Lawrence Ferlinghetti lives to be a hundred and it's a miracle they forgot to cancel, what a beautiful reminder. We speak of a restaurant we both know and I remember suddenly how my heart took a beating there once that turned into cracks in its armor, that turned into earthquakes and landslides in its unmovable strength, you know it's been so long, there's so much goddamned water under this bridge we could all just as well have drowned but here we are, blinking on the shore and trying to figure out why our clothes are sopping. He says let's go to Mexico instead, and you search for flights like you had never forgotten how to run to begin with.

A new year has begun underneath your feet. You refresh the live feed for cherry blooms in Brooklyn. Wait patiently for new words to grow.

Norouz

The night before, I lie giddy in bed attempting sleep. A full moon travels across the night sky. Dressed up kids flock to the synagogue nearby, a young girl tells us this is the synagogue for Purim and she looks like she knows what she’s talking about. A pink feather boa trails her. When morning arrives with droves of rain I think the city washes winter away. I pull out my mop, my latex gloves, I scrub every corner of the apartment and flood it with flowers instead. I drink champagne for breakfast. Piles of garbage and Salvation Army donations grow by the door, I am lighter, lighter, I am light. At the foot of a few objects, I hesitate. Out with the old, a voice whispers in my ear and I nod, yes, but I don’t want this to be old, that’s the problem. I fold the pieces back up, feel the weight in my chest again. I carry it like a dull ache through the days, wonder if I even remember who I am without it. 

In the morning I meditated so deeply I both laughed and cried in the same breath. Opened my eyes to see New York brick greet me, to see streets and lights and buildings and sounds that tell me I’m home. I felt sunshine explode within me and every cell in my body tingle. 

We may be limping. 

But by god, we made it out alive. 

Strung

The sunshine is relentless, lately, it beams at every turn, it wakes me in the morning and lingers into the evening. My pale winter cheeks flush, I unzip jackets and walk eyes closed down Broadway, how sweet the world can be after all this cold, after all this rejection and abandonment. I'm hesitant to believe it, like a shivering baby giraffe, unsure of the strength of my own limbs. I squint at the sunlight and test a smile, try on a deep breath for size, feel the fireworks build up in my chest but scared, so scared that it's only a ruse, that the avalanche will return and bury me again.

It took so much work just to survive. I just don't know yet if I'm ready to learn the motions,
again,
of how it is to live.

Loft

The bar is perfect on Mondays, quiet and dark. It weaves tales along your fingertips, the piles of paper amass at your side, as the glass empties in tandem. The bartender is new but everything else is old enough to make amends. The words toss and turn between elation and despair, my heart weeps and giggles in one breath, how is there sunshine in my chest while still everything hurts?

Oh but such is life. We do as best we can with the cards we've been given. Just because you wish they looked different, doesn't mean you can't be curious about the ones you have.

When I leave the bar in the early evening, dusk still lingers above the tenements. Unused words tumble out of my coat pockets, follow me home, skip into the avenues. We have far to go.

But at least, at last, we're walking.

Avalanches

Blank page, blank days, sometimes I think there's a blank expression on my face but it's only a front, you must know that by now, it's all a mirage. When I walked into that bar that night, when we sat at the edge of the ocean and felt the weight of everything, when you slept a long quiet night without nightmares, that was real. He says it's in your eyes, softly, but I know what's there and it doesn't mean a thing. I'm a writer, you know, I can make all of this up and you wouldn't know: that's the beauty of art.

The ground thaws more by the day now, I stop along the river to photograph every new flower. I don't know what I'll use the pictures for. Perhaps I'm trying to gather the riches, to never lose them. But the truth is you can lose anything and nothing can be done about it. The ground thaws more by the day, and the glacier in my chest with it. How sweet to breathe, to run my fingers along my skin and feel it again, to remember joy, remember hope. And yet, with the spring floods come every other emotion hidden in ice, comes every sad memory, every shard of abandoned excitement, every scar my body built just to survive. I know these wounds are mine, and mine alone.

So I keep the flowers close. Pad the wounds with petals that won't last the month.

The truth is,
You wake up with yourself. 

Kinetic

I know it has happened before I've even opened my eyes. There's a hum in the air, a buzz near my temples, there's a smile on my lips that stretches with the late morning sunlight. Spring has arrived.

The day is warm, warmer than it should be; I don't care, it is perfect. I run sweating to connecting trains, land in a quiet garden with cherry trees still sleeping, watch the brown earth lie still in anticipation. The entrance is pompous later in the year, built for show, I know its tricks, this is not why I'm here. Wander down a small path on the side, arrive at undulating lawns and steady tree trunks. There, hesitant at first, one by one little flowers appear, before spreading into a sea of color. Waves of purple crocus, little fireworks of aconite and snowdrops, soft rounds of hellebore, it's all I can do to keep from throwing myself in their midst and going for a swim. The sun breaks out, birds go wild, when I cannot help but smile, people cannot help but smile in return, it is a dream, only because we know it is real.

I sat on a bench later, basking in the sunlight, watching children play among the flowers, and thought, I survived, and realized in that instant it was true. It's over now, all the death and destruction and hollow weight inside my inert body, it is over. It is time to dust myself off, pick up all the pieces that were left waiting, an entire life of beauty and truth and strength in the making, they are all still here. A tattered book sits at the top of my backpack, whispers of the road and the world and all the madness I have yet to discover, and after months of feeling nothing but illiterate, I look at it now and think yes, I'm coming, and know that it is true.

Arrivals

So many flights come and go, you lose track of the tears in your heart. Spend your evenings mending them like stockings; you were always terrible in home ec but at least with age you've learned how to do a passable job. I woke with a start in the middle of the night and remembered all the lines on my face, all the wrinkles on the map of the world, I remembered every truth I had ever learned and wished I could forget for a minute, if only long enough to fall asleep. The lights were on, my clothes still wrapped around my body, these things happen, I had been so cold and now the radiator sprints toward its extinction. He writes, you sound like disaster with flushed cheeks and I recognize the tremble in his voice so well, feel in my fingertips the ease with which I could pull out my arsenal. I thought we weren't doing that anymore, a voice whispers somewhere in the top left corner of your chest, as I take a step back and look for alternatives. Hangovers always pull honesty out of me like a cure. Like this pokerface has a hard time keeping up when the makeup rubs off on the pillow. I leave his message on read and stare out the window instead.

You know the way people look at you, that mix of affection and bittersweet joy, the moment they know is the last before they have to break you?

That question is rhetorical.

Things Could Be Stranger

The hours while away, I'm unsure after the fact where they went. The hours, the days, the weeks pass and spring approaches, how far it seemed just a while ago, wasn't I just dying? The radiator in my room runs rampant: a winter of freezing and suddenly everything is tropical. The bed is empty again, the vacation over. In the park this morning, the flowerbeds were full of snowdrops and aconite, little winks from the earth that everything would be okay. I know how to breathe again.

But as the snow melts, as the hard ground turns soggy with thaw, as everything returns, do not your memories, your feelings, all the things you hid in permafrost, everything you resigned to the death of the season? I remember days of daffodils past, remember how many days I sat with daggers, trying to remember the joy of blossoms. Remember how cruel it seemed to ruin such a beautiful gift with tears, with all the broken blood that ran across its pages.

And yet.

And yet.

How each spring begins anew; how the buds of this year do not remember the blossoms of years before. How once again, winter killed you.

How spring brought you life anew.

If I Could Be There

We spend our days in art, in the impossible gifts the city gives you when you dare to ask for them, we navigate a thousand conversations along the Manhattan grid and stop only for snacks or introspection. We are never sated. Love is a friendship that still grows, still builds, even decades after the novelty has worn off and maybe here is its purest form. When all the rest has burned to the ground, when the lovers have packed up and left, when the art evades is and our children never were, will we not still be here with our fits of laughter and unwavering support in the mire?

One day, I stood in the window of an old electrical substation and looked at my city. The art behind me was overwhelming in its story, present, a reminder of all that New York is and was and how when we have art in our veins we must, we must, we must let it out. But I stood staring at the city instead, at the low, painted rooftops of the east village, at the bits and baubles of neighborhoods cobbled together, at a glittering skyline in the distance I could recite in my sleep, it sits like Braille at my fingertips. It falls and it burns and it closes shop, but though it sloughs off the old like a detached machine, the city is still recognizable in each new version, is still inherently familiar. No matter the window from which I watch it unfold, from which I watch it wink at me, it is always my city, it is always my home.
And when all the rest has burned to the ground, my every breath will whisper its outline into the night, how it will remind me
what
love
is.

March 8

I dated a man in publishing once. He showered me with books like they were flowers; I took every last one, added them in piles to any free space in my tiny room, felt wealthier than any larger apartment ever could make me. We were both poor, had nothing to offer each other, even in metaphor. When we parted I was reluctant only for the impending poverty of my shelves: his gifts had not been enough to buy him my adoration. He seemed to think I owed it.

Today I stood in a used bookstore and breathed in the smell of old riches, let the soft, dusty pages cave at my caress, let the narrow aisles close in on me. I lingered in the discount section - a frigid courtyard wrapped in tarp - until my fingers were numb and my arms full. Thought a life in stories is the only one I can live. 

I do not need a man to give me the stories, though. I make my own goddamned stacks of gold.

Ash

Oh, but the season is malicious, how you freeze to the bone, how your breath turns to ice crystals in your chest, you see the sun but cannot feel it on your skin, what else can I offer as sacrifice? We took the train out of the city to find the flowers but they had all been drowned in the snow: like the death of a child theirs was particularly cruel, how fragile these tender stalks. I look at the forecast again, again, I cry my prayers at its feet, she says it isn't so bad, she says look how bright the sky. I know the finish line draws near, every step now feels impossibly long but it is closer every day, all we have to do is survive. I have lined these walls with poetry, now, they do their best to keep out the cold but don't you see I set them all on fire? Don't you see I grovel now in the ashes of all I broke to endure?

I will stand back up. I will stand back up. It's only I'm so tired. It's only, this snow feels warm if you let it hold you. It's only the earth isn't so hard when it rocks you to sleep. It's only, this rip tide isn't so strong, if you just give in and let it
wash
you
out
to
sea.

But Soft

There's a space
after the fire burned everything to the ground
after you thought you couldn't possibly endure
another step in the dark,
but before the tiny spires in the soil wrap their tendrils around
your lungs and
explode in your blood stream,
when you think you are all right
when you think you are better by the minute,
but in fact you are nothing but
numb
worn down to your bare bones,
and stumbling forward through molasses.

How cruel to know life
and think this is all it is.

Mantra

March arrives in a whirlwind. When the sun shines, it shines without apology: you peel layers of knitwear, walk down the street with your eyes closed and your cheeks turned up like a satellite dish. But the gods are willful, and they throw icy winds and Arctic snowstorms in your path. The weather presenters yell themselves hoarse. I focus on putting one foot in front of the other, one foot in front of the other. Breath, in, breath, out. You are alive and that is enough; you are alive, and that is enough. They close the schools for impending weather and your heart aches for the little buds you saw along the river this morning.

But they have been through worse, and they have endured.

they have been through worse
and they have endured. 

Cast

Late nights in Brooklyn, you know the winding road through the industrial edges, around the projects and the police floodlights over abandoned playgrounds. The air is still, the sky light like when it intends to snow, my breath is loud in the way it gets when winter insulates us, I can read these clouds like I grew up in them. Snow in March, you'd think it was a test if you didn't know the world doesn't care what you make of it. Snow.

I have no use for your self pity now. I have no interest in wallowing. The season for aches and pains is over, I stuffed as much of it into a very small apartment as I could but here's the thing. It's March now and in March I open the windows. In March it all washes away into the ether, rises into the air, the thing is I told you I would survive the season and do you see me now?

A little snowflake can do nothing, to the hurricane I am about to bring.

March On

It arrives when you do not notice, a new month, a new dawn. I walked home along First Avenue, the sky that strange light it gets when it carries snow. A young man with a pizza box in his hand high fived me with his other; the steam stacks stood in the middle of the avenue, unperturbed, painting the city like you knew it from movies. At one a.m. this town is yours and it is all you could have ever dreamed. I had too much wine, we had too much to say, at one a.m. the world is yours and you do not give it back when asked.

A new month has arrived. Everything that fell with the snow is washed away by sunshine. I made this bed with clean sheets, I set the alarm for other time zones. An old month died.

I did not die, with it.