in the Sky

The day after is always cruel in its indifference. The last of the alcohol seeps out and leaves only gutter leaves, only muck and confusion. I ran along the river and tried to sweat it out, but one last heavy weight lingered on my brow. I went to Brooklyn, ostensibly to get work done but wanting really only to sit in a window and look at the city, let it heal me. A small dog curled up in the curve of my arm. I thought alright then, and it was. A small girl waits patiently at the end of the cursor, asks nothing of me that I do not give willingly.

The truth is I want to give her the world.

I don't know why I don't.

Belleville

People come for the cherry blossoms, she tells us. We’re booked through 2021. At the mention of cherry blossoms suddenly I see only fall foliage, only shades of fire and the possibility that maybe autumn isn’t death, that maybe things live because we want them to. That maybe I can look at this ink blot from another angle and paint another image inside my eyelids. Here’s my happy little accident. I wore a scent of 2017 on my skin, of tour buses and freedom, it drifted across my awareness at the strangest moments but it felt safe, comforting, steadfast.

We stood on the street corner for hours, until the air grew cold and my shoulders shivered. The Empire State went to sleep behind us, and I thought how this building has kept watch over me for so many years, unwavering, reliable, reassuring. How this building reminded me what home is. I know you don’t know all the answers.

Just rest a while. When you have found home, dare to believe it will know them for you.

Moonstruck

We drove across the Manhattan Bridge, late afternoon sun streaming across the island onto Brooklyn, the sky blue and the air expansive around us, and at last I remembered again how to breathe. I rested my hand on the steering wheel and took deep, clear breaths in a smile.

When you've been drowning in soil six feet deep, a moment in the clouds is a treasure.

Bum

The day after the bludgeoning is quiet. He asks how I'm doing and all I can think of are bruises, everything is dull, aching. I remember how to get up at the end of the fight, please do not send ambulances, but I know I should not have so many TKOs under my belt without someone looking around for concussions. I read Kerouac in Mexico and it soothes me, like his sad eyes hold my hands clear to redemption and maybe I'll make it out alive after all.


"Where'd you learn to do all these funny things?" he laughed. "And you know I say funny but there's sumpthin so durned sensible about 'em. Here I am killin myself drivin this rig back and forth from Ohio to LA and I make more money than you ever had in your whole life as a hobo, but you're the one who enjoys life and not only that but you do it without workin or a whole lot of money. Now who's smart, you or me?"

 Just because you made a deal with the devil doesn't mean you didn't win.

(post)

The only answer is work,
on a post-it.
The only answer is work,
in a notebook.
The only answer is work,
etched into my skin
again
again
again, they say
be mindful of tattoos
because they last forever but they
never warn you against scars you
carved into your own canvas, they
never stop you from all these stories you
paint
onto your sad eyes and
I know I fight
tooth and nail
to keep you from trying but
please,
try,
please,
remind me there are stories to tell
in which I
do
not
bleed.

Tread

She writes from across the ocean, and I do not listen. She yells from across the time zones and I try to look away, but the tears catch me off guard and I sit crying in a quiet Brooklyn coffeeshop, while people rush to work outside the window. The Mountain West calls to me, reminds me of quiet air and space for lungs to breathe, my to do lists falter in the margins, I wonder how early is too early to be drinking. Perhaps the truth is I was always stumbling, it's just sometimes I could make it look like I was running, sometimes I could make it look like I was dancing but I was only ever two steps away from falling down, do you hear what I'm saying? I'm saying leave this sinking ship, I'm saying save yourselves while you still can because everything is drowning and I'm trying to shut the hatch to minimize the damage, concentrate it to just this body, hear what I'm saying.

I'm saying you got out just in time. Keep swimming. I'm saying I don't think I can do it anymore.

addendum

She told me it's not that I don't know what my dreams are. That that's just something I'm telling myself. She told me the problem is I'm not doing what my dreams tell me to do. 

We craft our lives out of stories.

How would you like yours to go?

And Then

When he smiles, it is like a baby not yet in control of involuntary muscle spasms and still everyone around it coos and claps in delight. They do not coo over smiling six-year-olds who do not mean it. When I tell him truths he does not like to hear he hits me, soft at first across the chest, as if to test my reaction, hard later but noncommittally now, knowing I will not change the Universe to suit him. On the long train ride home he takes my hand and runs it across his face, as if trying to make our bodies one and my movements his, he buries himself in my lap and wants only to sleep. How life is cruel in its whims. Across the ocean, a woman whose blood runs in my veins, whose small body my own mother once held as hers, watches her belly grow, wonders at life. She says I haven't dreamed yet, and you know what she's telling you. She says One day at a time and you remember suddenly how many years are tied between you, how many stories. Does it not ache to be keept so far apart? One night I sat in a dark bar just like this one and whispered I love you, but only under my breath, only so you could not hear it and anyway that is years ago now, you are miles away and everything looks different from here. Some days I'd give anything to have you in that bar again, how simple our desires become in relativity. Anyway the point is today was the first day of fall and it was a hundred degrees so what do we really know of life? All we can do is put one foot in front of the other.

All we can do is live it.

Sundays

I tried on a new shade of lipstick today. I tried on a new dress, I tried on old words, dripping across piles of papers and reminding me how the depths of despair are a well for poetry. There is no tit that doesn't return a tat, there is no summer that doesn't have one winter behind it and one ahead. Your appearance may change in the mirror, some days I think I am more ghost than woman, but do you know today I tried on a new shade of lipstick and smiled in the mirror while my arms were full of midwinter tears and I think the secret to life is to carry all those sides and all those seasons all at once, and do you know today for a short minute I think I did.

Today for a short minute
I think I was
entire.

But I Can Go On

(and the words, 
that keep ringing in my ear:
Curiosity is the antidote
to fear.)

Dual (sic)

September appeases you with sunshine, like an apology, like it knows you know what it's there for, but it would like to soften the blow. We walk through the park and I think it's a lovely day for the beach but in my apartment we have already stowed away the picnic blankets. How life is cruel, when you are always one step behind it. My body aches, yells at me about children unmade, another month wasted and here's how we are made to suffer for the choices we did not make.

But I sit at this desk, again, cool air streaming in from an open window, piles of magic strewn around me on bits of paper, the space around me expanding with possibility and story. It's not that I didn't make choices, it's that I made strange, curious, fantastical choices that do not fit easily into properly labeled boxes and sometimes that's bound to chafe at your sides, but believe me: when you let yourself settle in and get comfortable in the box you chose, how much it looks like an entire Universe.

How much it looks like you gave yourself the stars.

Apex

The thing about storms is, they always pass. They always move on to some other green grass and leave you to wring out your socks and wonder what happened. The morning after it leaves, my body feels like the first day after a great illness is over, like I can taste the flavor of food again, like I can take deep breaths without an ache in my side and my skin no longer crawls when I touch it. The face in the mirror looks familiar.

The aftermath of a hurricane is always absence. The silence is a relief.

I walked down the west side, late season hues of oranges and pinks, the Hudson River glittering under clear skies and all the world like old friends. Turned in to remnants of rush hour traffic around the Lincoln Center and thought, I love every corner of this ridiculous city, as I stepped down Broadway and caught a train. 57 blocks south I unearthed on the same street and saw the Woolworth building anotheer 25 down, disappearing slowly under deep blue velvet twilight. I nodded in agreement with myself.

The relief of silence is a gift. The absence of illness, of the hurricane, is a brief moment to see your Self as open to filling only with that which you like. It's always there, even when you believe it's been drowned. If I can go to New York, live madly, and write, 

I will want for nothing. 

Re:volt

The entire day comes and goes in waves of uselessness, in fogs you thought had long since lifted and burdens the size of boulders on your chest. You swear you know how to breathe but the mechanics evade you. Morning in Brooklyn was cold, but the afternoon sun beats down on your southfacing windows and you cannot reconcile your autumn tears with the stubborn summer outside. this was always who you were, a quiet voice whispers as you attempt to bury yourself in apathy and a few invisible blades against your clammy skin. everything else was respite.

I open my eyes again, fill them with words and poetry and magic, drag myself far enough out of the sludge and into the sunlight that at least I can fill my lungs with air, the only answer is work and the only answer is the word and the only word I had was "wow", do you see how you had the pot at the end of the rainbow in your hands all along, do you see how we have nothing to fear?

I sit back down at the word processor, counting my minutes like pennies. I am unafraid now:

this blank page breathes for me.

Arrival

Journal entries and scraps of paper on my desk swim in delusion. Scribbles of a mad Universe clutter the pages, how they feel like home. I ask myself how to recover the magic I've lost to reality, it's a cruel trick of the light, you see the mortgages and required hustle playbooks stack themselves in your line of sight, and it gets too hard to see the world you had painted for yourself before. Do you remember there was a time when everything was oil paints and fireworks, when life was not a straight line but a dance, an endless wave you were riding and you believed you had found the Answer?

Just because they don't dream in color doesn't mean you weren't right to.

Re:minders

Sunday night full moon
in the east village
And the reminder that
Family
is not what you were born into
It is the love you choose.

Play Tag

Quiet afternoons in an empty office, you relish the refuge and wonder at your life. Scribble handwritten notes on a pad, saying it's just now that I know different, it's hard to go back to baseline. Realize that your whole life you've had the sad eyes, the heavy heart, and when you feared those breaks were temporary, you were right.

Maybe this is it, my love, maybe you and I are destined to walk together through this life and I shouldn't try so hard to leave you behind. Here, why don't you step up. Here, why don't you hold my hand, I am not afraid of you anymore, don't you see? If I cannot leave you behind, I have nothing left to lose. I give in to this, now, I give in to you. Come, let's move on.

Come, we have the remainder of a life to live. 

Approach

(you know your outer shell
is a praline
is a thin veneer that breaks
at slightest pressure,
but here's the thing
fuck you I get back up
again
and you can't keep me
down.)

Eves

You look over your calendars, and all these years later the date still stands out. You've forgotten so much of what the world was like then, what the city was like and you barely even knew it. When you first landed, how it was still a smoldering open wound; lately, how it is smooth and clean and the whole city tries to erase that it's ever been hurt, ever been poor, ever been unloved. You preferred its rough edges, its unconventional beauty, its relentless grit, and you wonder why any of us aim for  seamless perfection, that is not what life is.

It occurred to me at the laundromat today that we are, in fact, allowed to live the lives we choose, and not just for now. That love is a choice you make every single day, but if you keep making it, you don't have to let it go. And I love you, New York, as in ridiculous, inconvenient, consuming, can't-live-without-each-other love, and sometimes in a busy Lower East Side laundromat I am reminded that I may not have to, and it is the sweetest gift I ever give myself.

I am not perfect, New York, but I keep choosing you. I think maybe you are the best thing about me now, you with your hidden hurt, your scar tissue and endless ambition, and me with my endless optimism and thinly veiled dreams of magic. If you will only let me, New York, I think I might just choose you until my days run out.

Ash

An entire weekend comes and goes, clawing at your gut, a sense of unease slithering along your the inside of your skin, you do not pay it any mind. There is work to be done, there are drinks to be drunk. You wade through the masses of unknown eyes and walk home in the late night with newfound empty to add to your bowls. A Monday arrives, all promise and quiet hours for weaving your tales, you dive in head first.

It's not until your running shoes reach the bottom of the Brooklyn Bridge, when you've attempted to pound the last of the itch out of you, that it catches up to you in the flesh. The dark cloud over your head turns to pain within your body, you stumble a few feet and wonder if you'll make it home: is that a fever on your brow? Your body decides to yell and scream at you when you will not listen to pleas, you return to your room and collapse for the evening, unsure anymore what it is you are trying to outrun.

Sometimes it is not enough to sit still for a minute. Sometimes we have to fall to the bottom, expel our insides, clean out the messes from our tangled minds, rest in the power of having nothing left to lose. The sun will set, the sun will rise. Tomorrow you can step out of the mud, dust yourself off, and start again. Such is the blessing of another day.

Cling to that. Wake up, again.

Mille-feuille

A ball of fire sits in your gut. He looks at the dark cloud around your head and attempts to wave it away with only truths, what a blessing it is to be seen when you do not want to be. You try to shake the obstacles in your path, but sometimes the best lesson is this: the first step might be,
let it go.

Wreck

Sometimes I get so sad, and I don't know why. Melancholy drapes across me like a blanket weighted with day old rainwater from crosswalk puddles. If this description seems precise, it is because I have had a lot of time to think about it. The bartender scribbles notes at the end of the bar, a cup of tea by her side, perhaps we are all trying to be somebody. Did you know you cannot erase your problems with the naked bodies of people you do not love? They only scuff their edges against your grating skin, you sit on subway trains with bowfuls of empty in the middle of the night and try to sift them for morsels of purpose. You cannot fill the bowls with the touches of people who do not love you. But you're on the express train now, you're no longer sure how to stop.

I went to the bar after work, perhaps I should be more mindful of my health but there's this novel tapping on my shoulder at all hours, there's this sense of impending death leaning over my brow when I wake, perhaps it's only fall with the wet blanket again, I should be used to this routine by now. The bar gets busy. You want a moment's rest. The novel stirs at your side again.


The only answer is work. You couldn't be more grateful for the gift.

Hit

These things always seem to happen in slow motion, don’t they? How the man across the street did not register in your conscious until the car hit him right in the side, lifted him down first street, an array of confused or shocked faces lining the sidewalk. How a day of balloons and birthdays drop from out the soles of your feet and later on the subway you only know how tired you are. He says I saw you get on the subway in my neighborhood this morning, and you don’t know what the Universe is playing at. Perhaps the game is not for you, perhaps you are but a pawn, a disposable plaything to fill a moment of boredom. You give the police officer your phone number, go on your way, leave the borough.

Wait for the city to wash words back into your chest again.

Itch

The bar looks different on a holiday Monday, the crowd filteres out, the bartender turns the lights down, but once you settle into the wooden seat, does it not feel exactly the same? The story, which you have tried so hard to avoid - for hours, for days, for years - dances under your fingertips and everything feels fine. You remember again this is the gift you give yourself: time, dreams, joy, and you think maybe you've cracked some sort of code even though you forget so often. Your roommate sends pictures from Hawaii, but you stood at the airport this weekend and thought there is nowhere else I'd rather be, so she can have it. Summer ends, September sweeps in and tries to break your heart but you're not sure there's much there left to break and maybe September can have it. I love you in ways I cannot explain and for this short moment I don't need to, let me have it. Last week I stood at the top of the Empire State Building and let my heart beat again in the magic just of being here, just of owning a few mad streets of this jumble. How easily we forget (and yet how easily it all comes back to us). I owe this little town everything, and what a gift that debt is, alone.

Because debt means we are still tied together New York. I hope I will owe you my every happiness, forever. It doesn't seem hard, to do.

Edit

Another writing day, you pace around it like a stranger, like a high school crush. The last day of summer and it rains, it rains, fear lingers in the periphery just waiting for a moment of weakness and a chance to pounce. Newfound muscles ache like soft reminders and soon you have to decide if you're willing to give what they're asking of you. It is September, who will you be in it? Who have you been, thus far? There are too many opportunities for dress-up, for charades, and perhaps it's a welcome vacation from your regular life but prance in vacation long enough and eventually your face will stay like that. I know how my heart softens when I'm not paying attention, so I have to be careful while I still can.

The rain stops eventually, I run out of excuses. A little girl waits patiently on the page. Okay, I say, all the answers in my hand. I'm coming.

and You

Brooklyn, Brooklyn 
take me in 
Are you aware the shape I’m 
in

The F train makes you wait just long enough to remember how tired you are, how far from home when it’s late at night on a holiday weekend and all the city has escaped. I wrote a story once about New York after the apocalypse and I think perhaps this is what it feels like. Disorienting. The bridges are always their best late at night, I hear myself say I have to go home there’s a manuscript waiting for me. Maybe it would be different if it was different but I’m setting my sights to other tunes now, what are you going to do about it. Arrive late and trembling on my own stoop, I forget who I thought I was and maybe it doesn’t matter. Morning arrives, a manuscript waits for me.

September has a lot to prove.
Whatever it chooses, I am ready.