Freude

Summer sat thick on the streets of Manhattan in the morning, layered like grime in the subway stations and pushed ahead of trains to no relief. In Riverside Park, the trees played at suburbia, well-adjusted adults in outdated athleticwear power walking away the hours (the life?), and me, reminded again the blessings of the life I've built, no matter how withered it may look from the outside, in the neighborhoods where its rough edges do not meld with the current.

Later, I dragged my sticky skin and hydrated cotton wear into a small, freezing space in a non-descript building: on a desk stood small, colorful reminders of who the space belonged to, reminders that the last few weeks were only vacation, were only a blip in the radar from your regularly scheduled programming, that in fact you know exactly what you are doing and your rough edges are only right angles to fit into the framework you yourself have cobbled together. I take off my jewelry, breathe in cold, sterile air, indifferent to my thrashing. Ink seeps across blank pages, I forget the time, I forget how a minute ago I stood sweating on a Times Square subway platform and longed for rest. He looked at me across a table one night and said you are different now from a year ago, and I can't begin to tell him how much. Here's the thing.

One day I knew in my heart that there was an island that knew my name, one day I stood on its ridiculous, dirty, sweaty streets and understood what it meant to be home, one day I remained in its whirlwind and I knew love; don't you see, New York? Every day since I met you, I have tried to deserve this spot you held for me. Don't you see, New York? You took a chance on my poorly designed edges. I am only trying to pay you the dividends you have earned.

Bells

Perfect summer evenings, the colors trickle down the curve of the globe, the breeze comes in along the avenue just so, like the stage direction is meticulous, like the producers spare no expense, it is blissful. Last night, along the river, the fireflies were out in force, exploding their little beams of light across the water as if guiding the ships safely back to port. In the distance, summer lightning struck a dry sky, silent thunder smacking on the inside like held back rage that flickers across your eyes when you're trying to know better. These words might not even mean anything anymore; I know they used to cut me till I bled, I know they ached and tore in me with their absence, and now here they are spelled out in the soft space between us and I can no longer understand what they mean. There were fireworks in the far depths of Brooklyn last night, red blooms illuminating the bricks in silence, and then gone. I sat on a rock on my side of the river, staring past the throngs of late night runners looking to escape the heat, and trying to remember what I was escaping. Perfect summer evenings, how they are impossible to catch but you know them when your fingertips run across their air, how you remember every time they whisper your name in the night. There's a lesson in there how everything ends, but it is June now, and somehow
everything is only
beginning.

Deal

(Today, for a minute, when she asked how I was doing, all I knew was good. All I knew was the weight in my chest isn't there just now, all I knew was my heart beats outside of itself with all the love it must contain, all I knew was I keep finding these four-leaf clovers and I don't know, I think somehow they must mean something after all, I think maybe what they mean is Good.)

Movement

Monday morning, everything is already happening and didn’t stop to wait while you were away. The west village is a postcard, as always, but the white washed loafered conversation grates along your empty bank account, your tumbles in class. You long for the blend you know is here, you long for mosaic and the calm that only the madness of this city can provide. Everything that tore at my heart suddenly feels far away, I forget I ever cried. 

That’s the thing, you know. No matter how many tears we cry, no matter how impossible it feels to ever smile again, you put one foot in front of the other, eventually you smile again, eventually you make your way home. 

Knickerbocker

Summer nights in Brooklyn, you see threads you lost years ago waiting for you among unknown streets and you try to pick them back up with your newfound fine motor skills, the payoff is reassuring. Wander down streets yet unmarred by cynicism, by the big city, and wonder what your feet would look like on their pavement, wonder how you’d sleep in their lullabies. She says oh you only ever talk about moving, I don’t believe it, and you can’t yet tell if she is right. No one seems to know what they are doing,  anyway. The party was so many balloons on the ceiling, the guest of honor got locked out at one in the morning and there isn’t a metaphor in there, only the lesson that life is ridiculous and we’ll do best to always laugh at it. I thought I had answers, but I’m only winging it too, but maybe we can wing it together, all I’m saying is I like you. We are already knee deep in summer, but I’m not worried, it hasn’t been many minutes since I sat crying on a train on the other side of the world and it doesn’t mean a thing really. The point is tonight I watched the sun set in peach and cicada song over Manhattan and I could only remember the things that made me happy, what more could I ask
but that?

I Can Be Your Long-Lost

Immigrations at JFK is a maze of unanswered questions and time spent staring at walls, feeling guilty over nothing and wondering if the way you fold your arms looks suspicious. Do you know I had feelings once so strong I thought they’d devour you, and nothing that happened after proved me wrong.

Outside the arrivals doors, though, the air was mild, immensely humid, my hair curled like a yawn but everything was perfect somehow. The street smelled like the sea. Late night riders on the A train reminded me what this place is: the skinny, unruly guys up front chatting for the whole car to hear, the tired old man, the person of unclear gender and enviable hair taking selfies in the corner, a young girl yelling into her phone every time we got reception at the subway stations. Across the platform, crews scrubbed down Kingston-Throop ave: someone has to do that, too. Voices travel across my screen: are you home yet? A quirky tag on my luggage reads we all have our baggage. I’ve stared mine in the eyes this week. I have seen the chasms of my past and a person I’d rather not see. And maybe that’s the whole point. Baggage serves a purpose. 

When you no longer need it, you simply empty it out

and let it go. 

Redan Innan

Overwhelmed isn't the half of it. I forget to breathe, I forget that an entire world waits for me at the other end of this ocean, this life is too large, too long, too impossible to endure without closing doors and never looking back. If you carry every day, every person, every bittersweet summer night in your arms you will sink, you will never be able to say your farewells, you said too many for a while and now you won't do it anymore. I packed up the remains of a life and stowed it away safely with someone whose voice is etched into the side of my spine, and when the time came for the train to leave, there was nothing left but the bag on my back. We rolled slowly out of the little town, rocked gently past the bike path and lakes of my youth, houses where I've lived and loved, dialects I didn't learn until I left them. On my last run in the early morning, I curved around a little island in the river to see the old stone bridge; rumor has it its architect jumped from the bridge to his death for lack of faith in it, but 200 years later there's a lesson in there I can't quite place my finger on. I finished the run with a whole new book in my head, and isn't that the gift after all: to take this tangled mess of every life lived, and create something new, something whole. We heal ourselves as best we can.

I carry five generations of my people in this bag, see their hopes and dreams and monotonous routines reduced to a few precious pieces in my life. Still they remain, and their stories in my chest. I carry them across the world, did they know? Could they guess? When they looked at their life what did they think was the point? At the edge of the river lies an island that knows my name when I forget it myself. This life is too large, too long, too impossible, but hell if I won't carry it to the ends of the earth, hell if I won't live an entire life and ride this wave to shore.

Piragua

Late nights
Long days
Long lives
Condensed into so few boxes they
Mean more now because someone you
Love
Holds them
In our absence

Just like they
Held you
For so many years
And you didn’t realize

There was a moment tonight
When I did not know where they
Ended
And I began
And I think that’s the point of the
Whole thing.

Closer to Fine

And then, here it is. The day you’ve dreaded, when all the loose ends of your vagabond life must be tied together, stowed nearly away and paid for with money you have no idea how you’ll manage to find. Moments of your youth appear in boxes, neatly wrapped crystal the stories of which you’ve been hearing for years, and that vase is only for light pink carnations in the spring. I devour it whole, every last thread that weaves me into a family tree, that tells me a story into which I fit. I forgot, for a while, who I was.

But we sat last night on their couch, snuggled tight into the stories of our loyalty, and I remember: they gave me family, when I had none. When I ran, they waited patiently on the shore and pulled me in when I washed up, ragged and lost and hungry, they did not ask questions. And here we were, on a couch in a town I know by heart, the late night light with midsummer anticipation, weaving our tales again like we do not exist without these decades in our skin. I slept well then.

Perhaps all these things will one day burn to the ground. But the family you choose, and which chooses you, that is what you came for, even when
you didn’t know.

Entropy

The local bus meanders through a sleepy South Island, this is the old folks’ bus it stops everywhere and leaves no stone unturned. It reads like a memoir of your years on its streets, it speaks of an entire life that sat in your bones a lifetime ago. Here is the first apartment you saw and didn’t get, here is where you stood disoriented outside the train and wondered which way was up, literally too, here is where you stood for hours in the late summer twilight and felt nothing under his touch. Here is the park bench I walked past one penniless Wednesday afternoon and thought maybe I make this a home, instead, and I wondered if that was what rock bottom looked like. It’s a beautiful town. But maybe love is not enough to build a life. Isn’t that what these lessons were trying to teach you?

The bus arrives on a small island in the inner city strait. A moving van appears, expectant faces and a fresh start. Promises of new stories to write, the makings of a life after love proved flawed. I drag my bag past their symbolism, wave furiously but do not stay. There are too many manuscripts in your drafts folder. Which Story would you like to tell at last?

Twilight

The days pass in a flurry, the nights in a wave of melancholy. Dawn arrives before we’ve picked up, the quiet city rests and does not sleep. We empty bottles of wine like summer is endless, and at the precipice of a solstice, is it not?

They speak as if you’re ever coming back. You forget you are ever somewhere else. 

Plan return tickets like your life was all your own.  

Som Du Är Mot Mig

Late nights on the South Island, didn’t he say he had to be home by ten and here we are closing out the bar. Run-on sentences melt into each other’s superlative affirmations, how much love fits into the months of our absence, how much there is to say in the few hours we have face to face. You write because you have to, he says, and his every breath explains the words you forgot you had. New York beats inside my pale wrists, this is a good reminder when I forget, there is a purpose bigger than my own. He writes from across the river and you think there is a home here, when I bleed I forget the peace that rests within those words, why must it be so hard? Life is complicated and simple all at once, you are an ordinary miracle at every turn, take it with you to sleep in this strange bed, the street is quiet but your skin is always yours, you are never entirely lost. Life cuts at your very gut, but aren’t you also somehow invincible?

There’s an alarm clock waiting underneath the pillow. I do not pull the shades. There’s no sense sleeping through all these things

just because they hurt.

Like I Was Alive

You promised you'd be there when I woke up, his quiet voice sifts through my jet lagged unconscious, as a little hand sits softly on my arm. I follow him back into a dark room of jungle animals, but while he is content, I lie awake, riddled with the questions of a life falling through my fingers. I sat on the subway later, watching all the people who look like me and feeling alien to their every sentiment, unsure what to make with the feeling. Taste a new language on your lips, it looks so good on paper, how you could take it home to meet your parents, how it could decorate your home and still your early morning ruminations, but I walk away in confusion. I want to tell you there is darkness here, there is nothing but shattered illusions and you'll cut yourself on my sharp tongue, there's a mire here that will drown you, get out now while you can, do not let my taste on your tongue fool you.

I am not good for decorating your home, I don't even know what home is. I bleed in these streets and will refuse your band aid, let me fall once and for all and be done with it. Perhaps this blood will look better in poetry.

Otherwise, what's the point?

See the Tree Tops

Days pass, evenings pass, it’s hard to tell them apart in the land of the midnight sun and you don’t try. I’m tired at odd hours or not at all, one night I sat under a heat lamp in the old neighborhood and watched a new face contour its edges into my memory; I guess I’ll see you around? but it’s anyone’s guess as to when and on which continent, such is life and I do not ask questions anymore. The walk home was oddly familiar, tipsy on a Monday and silently smiling, the old church along the way remembered my drunken stumbles and let me go. The air is colder here, I don’t think I’ll come back. It doesn’t hurt any more, but only for how much it already has. I am numb to the world, now. 

Come, try to break me anew. 

Probably

För man får inte tänka så.

Early morning on the South Island, June sunlight and everything is only beginning. Make my way west, a nation built around coffee culture and the refills are free, the sunshine is hard earned. A familiar face across the table, she beams and cries in the same breath, how life doesn’t stop to wait for you to catch up, and her belly grows through its heartache. I walked up to the top of the mountain later, with the city spreading out below and tourists navigating the narrow strait. It was home once, yes, it still sits in you like a cornerstone, like a sweet memory with the sharp edges scuffed off, life doesn’t give you anything pure, this brick was hard earned too: you do not have to let it go.

It still sits crooked in my gut, I do not quite recognize my reflection in its mirrors.

I do not have the answer to this riddle, yet.

Södermalm

The train rolls in to the south station on schedule, clean wide south station and a familiar face at the end of the platform. It’s been so long since you were here and yet no time at all has passed. Everything looks the same, but nothing is. Loss aches in you at every turn, the sun sets late over rhododendron bushes and you get another lilac bloom this season, aren't you lucky? We walked past my old apartment today and everything felt familiar, but past. The streets are quiet at night, the air cool.

I knew once what it was to know you. Now, I’m not so sure.

Transfer

Land in a fog, you sense the chill before you feel it on your skin. Is this summer? You drag warmer layers from your bags with a sigh. The language around you sings at a different timbre, it’s like a soft open to where you are going: a little kinder, a little happier, a little less a reminder of the ways you have left behind. As long as you are in transit, you are untouchable; as long as you are still attached to this ticket you can pretend that there aren’t unanswered questions in your gut, that you do not live every step of your life in fear that they will never be answered in full. Perhaps that’s all love is, then, a brief moment where we can believe there is no uncertainty, that there is objective truth. I was meant to be with you, that is all.

A gate is announced across the terminal. I gather my belongings, take a deep breath. Imagine the answer is love (is love, is love, is love, is love), and love is a ticket you carry with you always.

Terminal B

How often have I walked these exact steps, maneuvered this giant suitcase, schlepped up and down dirty, dusty, smelly New York stairs, sailed in and out of trains and shuttles, I know the exact smell of the terminal carpets, the familiar sense of being in transit, is this what home is? Seems as likely as anything. He calls from across the river and suddenly the world is smaller again, how it expands and softens with every breath you take keeping track of loved ones, do they know they made your heart grow to reach the whole world? She writes from across the ocean and revels in disappearing time zones, when I look at the Manhattan skyline from the airport there’s a twinge in my chest where the joy should be. How after all these years I fear every departure could actually be for real.

That’s the thing about home. I fight so hard to find it, I am reluctant to ever let it go. And I still wish you would be the home I carried with me always

regardless the land under my feet.

Approach

Everything draws closer, you feel the itch of tickets in your backpocket, how they delight and distract you. At every turn there is a message, or a plan, your calendar spills over and your suitcase buckles under the weight of silly gifts and heavy expectations. A small girl tugs at your skirt hem from the edge of her page, you both fear the departure and what it might mean. You have left and lost too many loves to endure it again, it is best to hold tight and you know it. For a minute, my heart leapt in my chest, but I hold on to it, restrain it to its rib cage: I have left and lost too many loves to endure it again, please just let me rest for a minute before I try.

Everything draws closer, everyone comes home in summer, there's a bead of sweat in the small of my back, there's a scar now where your lips used to rest, I fill this suitcase because the pit of my stomach is empty and I will not rest until I have filled it with magic.

Lykke

Manhattan swelters, here summer arrives at last and it is as brutal as you had tried to forget, everything is a blurred edge, your skin included. They write from across the world and revel in the season; we survived the dark and we earned this -- no one works. My phone is a steady stream of bare feet by the ocean, of simple dinners on boats and long, slow sunsets over the city: the ache in my chest returns, of a home I have forgotten lives in me. I ran along the river later, the early sunset washing Williamsburg skyscrapers in peaches and blues like they knew nothing of other shores and didn't care to. Underneath the Brooklyn Bridge, I stopped to rest in the view, to hear the city beat its steady rhythm along my temples. A bag packs itself in my periphery. A melancholy joy builds in my chest. 

We cannot escape everything we are. 

But Soft

Early mornings in Brooklyn, I spend an entire cup of coffee trying to talk myself out of the effort, I am tired. My to do list grows, unwieldy, it expands into cracks of empty space and laughs at my attempts of early bed times. You can sleep when it is winter. The cup of coffee empties, a manuscript full of post-its beckons in my bag. I walk out the door before the neighborhood wakes; the June air is sweet with jasmine and potential, one day I asked the universe for a chance to fail up and it seems after so much failing, it is at last time for the up. These are gifts I give myself.

I do not have to give them back.

Pause

But what’s the best way to do it? She asks, exasperated. How do I know if I’m doing it right? A lifetime of perfectionism deep in her bones, she doesn’t remember how to find something for which to be grateful. I’m just afraid that if I think of something good, I’ll instantly remember all the bad and how anything can be snatched away from us at a whim.

I wrote my list without expectation, saw drunk scribbles from a night before and laughed at how often sunshine repeated. It’s only weather, yet here it is etched in ink, over and over and over. My heart swells thinking of a stranger's smile, a lucky turn of events, witnessing sweet winks from the city between its citizens. I go to bed too late, too tired, yet I do not mind the fast approaching alarms. When I look back on this day a year from now, do think maybe I’ll just write this day on my list, and that will be enough?

Threats

Eleven hours later, we wear down the working class one tired body at a time, this was not what your parents had in mind when they tried to give you Everything. But you drag your weary bones back to your Monday bar, and find your bartender has returned. I went to Korea! she smiles as she pours your regular. I always come back! You tip her like the dollar bills are love. The couple next to you fight dirty, he threatens to leave, she cries. When he stays she cuts him. You grow drunk between piles of papers, it’s a gift and you know to recognize it.

Late at night, he cries across the long distance line from palm trees and lonely lawns. You don’t know how to explain that life means breaking and breaking but that the point is you build yourself up again and you are stronger now than you ever were before, yes, but also do you see how brightly your flowers bloom? They know now the value of mortality, of vulnerability, of one tough rainstorm at the peak of their blossom. You wish you could carry the tears of every one you love but they are not your sorrows to bear. But have no doubt.

Wherever you go, however you stumble, I am always only half a step away, have no doubt.

Wherever I go, I always come back.

Maybe

Instant rain, a flash flood warning and canvas shoes floating off down the streets, everyone is caught by the same surprise and with a sunset this glorious we have to only laugh. The alarm clock glares at me as the hours while away, I prepare my piles and control the fallout: a number counts down on my wrist. Who will you be when nothing remains? 

Sunday mornings were made for lazy breakfasts and minibar vodkas, we stare into the sun and reminisce about the East Village like we put in the time and I try to forget my search history of other boroughs' apartment listings. She says your name like you are family, it is a gift, but you put in the time there too and that kind of love knows no infidelity. I sat in a factory window later, watching the summer evening play across the entire city, and I wondered how I could ever have been so lucky to call it home, to feel it in my bones that it is mine. One day you will feel love like this and you'll wonder how you ever settled for anything else. 

Oh

how I hope one day

you will.