Find them in the early morning, pack tents and water bottles, extra sunscreen and giggles, tumble out onto a quiet Greenwich beach, the tide is low and we collect shimmering shells all the way out to sea. Manhattan lies hazy in the distance, like a mirage in the desert and you already miss it. My pale skin pulsates against the sun, for a short moment I breathe without reminders, the water is cool and I am as close to happy as perhaps I can get these days. On the train home I read stories from a year ago, a July of browner skin but a veritable black hole inside it. My words are better in anguish, I declare, but it seems a frail victory. The truth is I’ve pulled myself back from a pit so deep I didn’t know I’d ever see a sunrise again, the truth is I’ve skinned every part of my body trying to climb out of it and had I known how close to the bottom of Everything I was I would never have made it.
I don’t know where I stand now. I know my accent lilts to the lower east side, I know my feet walk in poetry and this smile is made of starlight and magic. But I know my sleep is restless, and my eyes are forever a little broken, even though you can only see that if you really look for it. Maybe I think I’m back on steady ground but I’ve made a nook halfway up the pit and think as long as I can breathe I’m content.
What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, they say.
Maybe what constitutes alive is subjective, though.
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