Mi Tierra

August rolls in, fat, yellow August with its hot days and dark nights. You forget to remember the days, spending every morning with your toes in the sand and your afternoons in a fervor by the word processor, aching out twists and turns in the story because soon it must be finished soon, you must expel this sweat to the world. A little girl runs across your pages, but she is not the only one: you see your demons run themselves tired through your ink-stained veins.

We went to Coney Island to see American summer up close. I reveled in a cool breeze, in a short break from the inner madness, but the truth is there is no reprieve. The truth is blinking lights can’t erase the darkness from your heart, the truth is saving everyone else can’t save you from yourself, soon it’s 37 years of your stumbling and are you ever going to walk on that balance beam without bruises?

The Q arrives when you need it to, arcs along the bridge to Manhattan and runs local when your stop isn’t express, it’s a soft kindness to your hard exterior. You sink into the warm embrace of your borough, into the knowledge that however lost you may be, you can always come back home, that you are never so alone that fourth street will not walk beside you. Your demons sit by the bedside, waiting. It’s time to rewrite this story. Give them a place, and then
let them
go.