Some Butterflies Somewhere

At mile five, the sun sets over New Jersey. The city swims in an orange glow, perfect summer evening the park is full. I stop to take a picture, long enough to hear my screaming muscles. By mile seven, twilight lands on the Staten island ferry, by eight and a half there’s a cool breeze over the Brooklyn bridges and you try not to remember how tired your legs, how unmoored your heart. At mile ten I land on a smooth, flat rock in the dark, an old Chinese woman next to me stretching noncommittally. The east river tears up a show of splashing waves and deep green turmoil, how desperately I long to feel the ocean around me again. When I stand again, my legs have all but forgotten how to move, how to stretch and contract, how to want anything. But my mind is clear, the incessant chatter silent.

Perfect summer evening in New York. We are alive. That is all. That is everything.

Black Cab

Charles Bukowski talks to me again; it's been a while. He stares at me from under those heavy eyebrows, as he does, and scoffs. Is this where you thought you were going? You called the wrong person. He takes a long gulp of some unnamed liquid, spills ashes all over, what does he care. You drink water because it's a school night and you have all these things still hanging around your to-do list. He looks at you in disdain, so finally his face mirrors yours.

A stranger speaks to me of the possibility of life on other planets. He says maybe I'll see you soon then, and you wonder if we'll ever make it far enough into space that it feels like something. You set the bar high, and then move it to the impossible. Bukowski is pleased with that, certainly,  but now his ash is all over your white page and you forget what your to-do list wanted you to say: instead all there is is piles of poetry, all there is is the American night and word at your side, you filled your bag with chaos and euphoria, how do you explain to a stranger you sold your sanity for a pocket full of mumbles and is it even worth trying?

Bukowski pours me a drink. I take it. There's smudges of ink on my fingers, a trail of stardust in my wake. We don't have to say anything at all.

In the Sky

A day comes and goes underneath the soles of your feet. You are running, if only metaphorically, it pays almost the same currency. A smile on my shoulders, a tired ache in my muscles that satisfies,  do you know that once you start running it's hard to stop, that's the trick. One day I stepped off the hamster wheel, one day I started writing a book, one day I opened my eyes and decided to live a life, do you know I haven't stopped yet. It doesn't take much to make me smile these days, I think my heart is a helium balloon.

I know I drown a hundred times each week.
But every time I get the chance to fill my lungs with air,
it's like I forget I was ever even wet.

Bramble

I sleep a thousand sleeps, in broad daylight my body bows out, says this is all I can do, it sets and resets, gets caught in grooves too deep to climb, perhaps this is a Life. Every day we put one foot in front of the other, every day we do just the best that we can. I ran so fast along the river tonight I thought I was flying, scores of holiday revelers lined up along sunset colors and glimmering skyscrapers. My body aches, my mind screams, every day is an exercise in keeping your legs kicking enough to stay above the surface, every day you didn’t die is a day you won, you collect trophies like dishes in the sink. 

Do you think one day we’ll do more than just survive?

Nevermind

Summer arrives to the little island at the edge of the world, streets steaming and skin exposed. My shoulders burn and I can't be sorry. The stores fill with Georgia peaches, pennies by the pound, I fill my bags with their sunshine. When I first moved to America we had a garden with peach trees, apricot trees, sprinkler systems, I thought we had moved to Paradise, I didn't know one could have this for real. We climbed fences and played late night pickup in the neighbor's driveway, had sleepovers on the lawn and scaled the roof from the bathroom window, Simon and Garfunkel in the tape deck and long road trips through the desert West. When I first moved to America it was like we were living our very own dream, my memory of those first years is like a book I keep reading and re-reading, like I know every dog eared page between its covers and it made me who I am at the core. And with every summer that arrives since then, the fresh cut grass smells like America, my own warm skin feels like America, with every summer I am reminded that I started dreaming one August evening and no one
ever
made me
stop.

Meditate

The office building is quiet, Saturday morning and everyone knows someone with a boat, or at the very least a backyard barbecue.  One lone violinist rehearses next door, their melancholy scales climbing the cardboard walls, and I smile at the company. Did I not wake in sunshine this morning? Did I not remember that this life is mine for the taking and I have every opportunity to make something astounding of my time with it? My tooth forgot to hurt then; I let it rest.

There was a moment yesterday,  when the bus twisted around the turnpike and Manhattan appeared like a gift in every window, the elusive jungle cat to a hoard of eager safari participants, when I couldn't stop my chest from swelling, my head from giggling. After so many years of this, it begins to dawn on me that I may never stop, that this jumble of buildings, this chaos of people, will always beat its way past my every last cynical defense and soften the edges of my heart. I welcome the humility.

So you see perhaps they weren't commitment issues, after all; I just knew not to settle for anything less than magic.

Vampire

Water towers along America, an entire country’s history plays out across your bus window, the driver says he’s been with greyhound for 26 years and seen every corner of this land a hundred times over. Married my sweetheart right out of high school, ran to the court house and straight back to school after, that was 38 years ago now and I just say ain’t that something, because it is. 

We stood on the front row, replacement parents with all the pride our eyes could bear, as a young man walked across the stage and accepted proof of how far he’d come. The valedictorian stepped up, said I wasn’t lost so much as diverted, and you think maybe her words apply regardless the road you are walking. You’ll get where you’re meant to be going. Just put one foot in front of the other, just do the best that you can, honey if you could see what I see here from the front row, your eyes would be brimming, too. 

Lush

Greyhound buses still leave out of port authority bus terminal. Dirty scuffed port authority where the homeless and decrepit have earned their belonging more than you have. Bus sneaks out of the midtown tunnel, dark, dark, dark and then suddenly: New Jersey. Twisted turnpikes and bits and baubles of a skyline appear, reappear between the greenery. In a car below us, a couple drives with New York plates, his right hand on her thigh. No more, no less. At a turn, my chest is stabbed with the fear of ever having to leave this city, of watching it slip away behind me, powerless to stop my departure, of seeing it so sweetly like this behind me and knowing that is all. Now, instead, safe in the knowledge that distance makes the heart grow fonder, safe in the knowledge of return tickets and love the kind that lasts even when you do not cling to it, now I can look at the open road and think of all the stories I’ll bring when I return.

Infinite

(At the end of the night, 
when I counted my blessings, 
I found that the pages weren't enough
to hold them. 
The words spilled over, 
spilled out, 
my heart stretched against my rib cage,
a balloon full of giggles. 
2nd avenue lay quiet outside the window 
a soft summer breeze
and all the rest of our days
still 
ahead.)

Collected at the Borderline

Monday morning in sweltering New York summer sun, you barely have time to see that sharp edge between dreams and reality, waking at dawn and forgetting what might be expected of you today. I want the ocean now, it pulls at me, calls to me, reminds me there’s a wild current out there and I’d do well to swim in it. Ramble instead in foreign jungles, consider a change of address, taste the street under the soles of your feet, wonder how the curve of your body may mold to its crooked grid. A suitcase arrives, six years it spent gathering dust in someone else’s attic and now that you uncover the treasures do they not turn to sand between your fingers? Loose bits of fabric, tapestries of another time, things that you thought you could not live without, but here’s the thing: not only did you live, but you blossomed beyond even your wildest dreams. The girl who packed that suitcase may look like me in a crowd, but I don't know her anymore.

There are so many unwritten pages around us, do not worry about them. Keep your pen to the ones you do get to write, write them as very best you can. Do yourself proud:

The rest will follow.

This is the first day of my life

What is there to say that has not already been said? What words to write, what smiles to share, you’ve seen all the glitter my eyes can muster, have felt the power of a spring morning on your pillow, we know the peaks and the chasms, what else is there to know? You said everything changed, you felt 
as if 
you just 
woke up.
Summer arrived like a dance this week, my heart warms, my limbs soften, did you hear me laugh just then at the Everything? I meant it. Today is the first day, yes, but aren’t they all? Aren’t we always starting over, aren’t we always building a life on a pile of first days, aren’t we building this life on a string of yeses, I choose this life, again, and again, and you may think it is just a habit but
no.

I know exactly what I’m doing.

Re: Align

Early mornings in Brooklyn, the sun returns and you believe again in forward momentum. The lilacs are in bloom, their scent blankets the cobblestoned streets with visions of childhood summers and optimism. I woke this morning to a black and white picture of an impossible miracle, her due date is Thanksgiving, I guess it means something. I spent all my wishes on this tiny gift, it doesn't matter if I'm broken, so long as she is whole. Did you not hear me in that quiet house by the river when everything had turned to ash? This is the heart I was asked to own, I will collect these shooting stars for you forever, such is life.

The day caught up with the early risers at last, busying the streets and filling the little coffee shop where a small group sat in the back plowing through literary mountains of our own making. Quietly the magic began to evaporate, quietly business casual filled my line of vision and yelled about to do lists, I longed for the cocoon again where nothing exists but words, my words, this purpose which has extinguished everything else around me. The truth is it's hard for me to regret the fire.

It must mean something that I am still here,
when everything else is gone.

Face

The bar was quiet, even for a Monday, icy rain played November outside the window and everything is upside down. I don't even mind. She writes to say her belly grows, but still we do not dare believe in futures: how a year smokes and burns behinds us and suddenly this, as though it wasn't all destruction, as though something could start from scratch. Count the days, set new mile markers, you climb the mountain one step at a time, on foot in front of the other, that is all. I have the secrets of the Universe in my pocket, but I cannot make you see them. I will hold them here, let them tickle my fingertips until there is another palm where I can put them. I have a hundred four-leaf clovers in my back pocket, I have New York under my feet, one day I saw the answer but maybe I got confused by the sunshine in my eyes and it's just a little further still. 

I will put one foot in front of the other.

I will dance my way to the stars. 

Curl

Whipped winds, there's a strange surge in the air and the metaphor is surfing a great wave: some days  we are pulled into the undertow, some days we manage to skate by at the top of a crest and hope only to hold on for dear life. Every wave ends, every high is only an exercise in holding off the inevitable fall. You realize not everyone lives their life in this image, but you do not believe it. You lie on your board, feel the current move beneath you, feel the current move within you, one day I stood in the ocean and believed I would make it back to shore; I forget sometimes in winter that there is life underneath this ice. Remember sometimes in spring I am not content to be the wave. 

I want to be the whole fucking ocean. 

Geronimo

The rain starts, and it stops. Brooklyn swims in perfect winds and I haven't the time to consider all my wrong turns, shouldn't I be safe in the nook of my own borough by now? The Empire State building gleams at you between the crooked streets, how it always sets you right when the ground is shaking. Every now and then my cells align, like a deep breath I didn't realize had been missing.

When most of your time is spent drowning, you take any break you can get.

Pointed

Brief flutters of a lifeline, you recognize the spark in your chest trying to jump start a vehicle that hasn't moved in ages. Try to see signs from the Universe, try to build giggles by the right turns at the ellipses. Try, try again, I found a hundred four-leaf clovers by the river today, he marveled at the coincidence and you thought well, coincidences happen all the time. I woke in a dark room, I mean that metaphorically, my whole being is a dark room now and I haven't enough drugs in this medicine cabinet to turn the lights back on. Pull out the cables, read the instructions again. Perhaps you missed something important when you thought you were invincible. See it now, clear as day.

If it still won’t start, your battery may be beyond help.

Nimbus

(You recognize the darkness, when it comes, as an old friend, it sweeps into your room and cuts the light, it sweeps into your chest and cuts every last suture that sat in your skin. I sat in a dark room and thought, this again, and it was like the last years had not ever happened. We are who we were. How did I ever think to be above that.)

The Secret

Early mornings in Brooklyn, he asks for your eyes but all you have are excuses. Hold tight to the scribbles in your hands, the collection of paper scraps in your bag, hold tight to the stories in your head, they are all you have now. For a brief moment, you grazed what it was to be human, to follow the arc so obvious for most and so perpetually foreign to you, but that moment is gone now, it wasn't yours to hold. All that remains are these words in your chest, maybe they are all there ever was, maybe you were fooling yourself to think you'd made room for someone else to move in. I'm sorry I smiled at you in that way that made you believe I was giving you the stars, I'm not sharing them anymore. There's a bar stool with my name on it, there's a rambling empty street in New York City with my footprints all over it, there's a story somewhere in the Universe with my voice in it and the only thing that matters now is that I remember how to tell it.

The secret to writing a novel is
write it.
The secret to living a life is
live it.
I have had enough of our excuses.

Wishing Well

You sit in the window of a dark bar dousing the blood in your veins, quelling the fires. Send out hesitant tendrils, request for lifelines, whisper the fears of your life into the world and see where they catch. A life raft sinks behind you, stones collect in your pockets, you are all mumbles, all three-leaf clovers. I dreamed the plants in my windowsill had wilted. I forgot to save them. There might be a message in there somewhere, but do you know what? I'm done with vague messages from clouded minds, please yell your messages at me from the rooftops: there's a shooting star drowning in my ear because it didn't stop to ask for directions and I'm no longer open for interpretation. I read a poem today so good it broke my heart, and I thought there will never be a purpose higher than this.

Just you try and stop me.

Update

How many years pass, you spiral in the same confused maze with all the answers in your hands but you are blind to see them. I spilled them all across the bar and picked them up a hundred times before I began to recognize their crooked shapes against my fingertips. How life is a constant choice. Yes, to living another day. Yes to loving you, to loving me, yes to brushing these shoulders off and leaving the old ghosts in the dust, yes to carrying them even on days when you think you cannot. Yes to holding a small candle in my pocket. This little light of mine, I'm going to let it shine, but it isn't the fire you thought sat in you. Nothing is what you thought, and perhaps that is the lesson.

A young girl stands at the edge of the page. She waits and waits and does not tire. You take her hand, begin to walk. Yes to the answer when you see it at last.

Surrender

A sun rises at last over Manhattan, I wake earlier each morning and do not complain. There's a magic in quiet mornings over old water towers that trumps your weariness, it is a gift. Meander down through financial districts and sleepy old alleys built before anyone had any sense of what this city would become; do you not prefer the naive innocence of its humble beginnings? I never regret falling head first into any of these adventures, no matter how many bandaids they cost me after the fact.

Last night I found a four-leaf clover, tucked away in a notebook from another time. There are no answers to be found, anywhere, we do the best we can with our questions, we do the best we can with our hearts, it's only because I'm addicted to being happy that I refuse to settle, it's really quite simple, I will not change a thing. After all, aren't we beings ever desirous, ever longing, ever curious?

I have made a lot of mistakes in my life. The answer is not to stop living entirely. 

Only Human

How you cannot climb out of the trope, you over schedule warm spring evenings so you don't have to come home and see the truth written out across blank pages. You know what the little voice inside you is trying to say so you choose not to listen. Plaster someone else's naked body over your gashes, see how long it sticks (the answer is it doesn't matter, nothing heals, the answer is stop looking at the clock it will not move). This circle is getting repetitive.

I found a four-leaf clover in the park this week. I found a bunch. I gathered them in my arms, they spilled over and littered my path, I stored them in my books of poetry and asked the Universe to share my luck because how much could I possibly need and wouldn't I rather it go to those I love? I found another the next day, and another, the Universe winks at me, we laugh in tandem, and how fragile it is  when the storm clouds move in on the horizon. I thought if I buffered my home with enough wishes on shooting stars I would be protected, but here's the thing:

At the end of the day, they're only meteorites and wilting plants.

At the end of the day, you will bleed until you are willing to listen.