Leap

An extra day appears, sloshes around the end of February like a strange gift you maybe didn't ask for. You pace the apartment in a daze, unable to summon any New York hustle from your depleted spine. His voice feels like home, you lean back and let it heal you, despite yourself.

There was a time, when this month dragged you through the depths of your own hopeless despair, how you cut yourself on the jagged edges of every wrong turn and stumble, until you lay panting in a pool of your own blood, grasping at straws until the return of a milder season. This year you stare in amazement at the calendar, wonder when the Great Darkness will hit you, unbelieving that it might not. Bring your list book back out from its dusty pile on the shelf. Ready yourself to make plans again.

Dare to believe you'll be here to follow them through.

Partum

Days meld into one another and disappear between your slippery fingers. Every day is weary, but full of deep breaths and attempts at second chances. You are tired. A baby arrives that was not before, and somehow everything and nothing changes all at once. I cried a little in the silent spaces but do you know I ran along the river one day, sun shining, daffodils stretching their bright faces toward the sky, and I thought here we are, and everything is just beginning. Everything and nothing changes all the time.

Every curve in the road is a blessing if you let it.

Labors

Can you pack an overnight bag just in case? she says mildly, breathing through contractions and wishing all of life could be scheduled. Ten hours later, he calls a car and you curl up on their couch, impossibly attempting sleep. How we try to control everything and then the monumental things lie in planes all their own, we cannot begin to touch them.

I lie on the couch, staring at the stars. Wonder at the miracles to come. Sometimes all we can do is wait for them.

Plan

For a brief moment, the scent of ripe mango wafts past my temples, like a misfired synapse hinting at impending collapse. Visions of tropical lands build in my shoulders, of Australia in summer, juicy fruits picked fresh off laden boughs, ocean waves within reach and that very particular brightness that burns your retina but makes you smile. I stared into the therapy lamp this morning like an addict, but do you know yesterday I sat in a sunny West Village window and it had the same effect, everything is coming.

The pace of New York sinks back into my bloodstream. I retrieve quick wit from the back of my tongue, remember how to impatient at crosswalks and beam at the skyline from highrise buildings. Last night I careened along the river after sundown and sparkled at every building that twinkled in my direction, don't you tell me this city only takes and takes because it gives at every turn if you let it. I have such strange dreams lately, yes, I wake exhausted and confused but I go to sleep with a smile on my face. I said I loved the American West and here I am, smelling toast burning and wearing my body into the ground overjoyed. Do I contradict myself?

Very well.

I have long since learned not to fear the multitudes I contain.

Lobotomy

Land slowly, let your body sink into the reminder of what an express train in Harlem looks like from the local, what the corner seat in your regular bar smells like on a Tuesday, what traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge sounds like when you run underneath it: in short, what home feels like. You sit in a vat of apathy for a while, but it's just the hangover talking, it's just that you needed a moment to yourself and then you will be back, it's just that the words don't look so good when your mind wallows and then what's the point in speaking them?

I sat under the stars one night and saw an entire world come together within me.

There's no reason to think the answers aren't still all there.

Re:Volver

Dawn is barely a hint on the horizon when we drive out of the valley, bags packed beyond capacity with pantry riches and pictures from lives past. I barely realized I was there and now I’m gone, what a surreal time in the underground. On the plane, flip through pictures of city skyscrapers to try to remember the feeling of its blood in my veins. They text from my real life, speak of dinner plans and breakfast plans and all the things that will happen as soon as I land, and I know they are a gift, don’t think I don’t know it.

But for a short time I sat with the world peeled away, with nothing but a very small voice in the silence. For a short time I had only the Word at my fingertips and I found again - again, again - that it is all I truly need. Last night I sat in the dark night under entire galaxies of stars and not one of them fell, not one of them did not hold steady, we spoke of the Life and do you know, all my wishes fell away in humility.

All we can do is put one foot in front of the other. All we can do is prepare the ground. When the miracles fall, we will be ready.

See Where it Come Down

Last sunrise over the mountains is perfect, fiery pink over new snow and velvet peaches along the southern ridge. The coyotes sneak by when they can't get shot, a housecat and a hawk hunt the same fieldmice. I sit on the floor now, it helps me eke out the last of everything: the view, the peace, the story I came here to find. A pile of notes lie in the completed pile, a crisp, clean manuscript sits on my desk. It's time to wrap up and go home.

You were always late to everything but my, when you find your answers you sure find them. Your father asks you if it's love that's making you so happy, and you do not know how to explain that it is, but not how he wishes it. That putting ink to paper is the only way your spine aligns, your soul breathes, everything feels right. A retreat wraps up but the breath in your lungs comes back where you go. This story is yours.

You tell it.

Race

When it arrives, it's like you never did anything else. It's like you were only ever meant to sit in this bright, quiet room, weaving stories around themselves, conjuring worlds out of thin air and lessons out of the tears in your own fabric. Like you never begged the Universe to let you go, to let you find other paths. When it arrives, it's like you always knew this was the only thing you'd ever want to do.

I came out of the daze at last, long after sun set, my head spinning and my vision blurred. Piles of paper and post-it notes amassed around my desk, a story building itself into magic at my fingertips. Normal conversations sailed past my head and I couldn't remember how to be a part of them. I sat under the stars for a while, but I had nothing to say to them now. The little girl at the end of the cursor rested. Everything was clear.

You wade through eons of impossible just to reach this one island where it all makes sense. What could you possibly ask of the stars, now?

You know everything you need, already.

Stay

The temperature rises by the minute, sunlight so bright you think this must be an alien planet because what else can explain the obscene squint in your eye. Jagged peaks and rolling hills beam into the room where you've closed all the doors, turned off all the sounds, you've stopped looking at the clock because panicking about minutes passing is addictive in a way that nothing else is. Look how I throw my gifts away, it is your most satisfying self-harm, it bleeds better than anything contained within your skin. Thoughts run wild with your own shortcomings, a city that never sleeps requests you do the same.

He sends you a good luck charm, a quiet reminder. He points to the sunshine. You pull up the blinds. A pack of coyotes saunter past your window, on a time table all their own.

Take a deep breath, you write on a Post-It, stick it on the window. Return to the word processor.

Stay.

Availability

The maddening city begins to call you, as you try desperately to cling to the last morsels of your refuge. The truth is you want none of this business as usual business, not in your whole life. You'd be quite content to linger in the ethereal otherworld that lives outside the box, a world of weather and breath and longing, watching the hawks hunt at sunrise and talking to the stars under a full moon, imagining what else life is and wanting desperately to tell everyone. One morning I took a broken heart and a ratty manuscript and drove ten hours through the desert until I reached the ocean, you cannot tell me I do not know where the magic lies, you cannot tell me I'm not
on to
something.

And Again

A weekend passes in squanders, in balloons and sunshine and the gnawing sensation that there is something else you should be doing. Everyone else only wants you to do it in theory, while you dream of remote Montana wilderness and a house without doors. The truth is we have to build our own walls.

The truth is if you believe in this this magic, then it's up to you to build it.

Put one foot in front of the other.
Don't look up until you are there.

Yellow

Look how they shine

I drove into the canyon at sunset, a day of sluggish clouds leaving just a sliver of space for the setting sun to set the mountainside aflame. Twenty-seven years of sunsets along these mountains and still they take my breath away, I had to slow the car to take it in. You should see this, you know, there's something of life in these ridges, something of God in these valleys and your voice is too far from my skin lately, it sets everything out of sorts. Today I drove into the canyon, in the deep of winter, and thought against all odds how happy I am, how full, how right.

Sometimes we are given miracles.

Look how they shine for you

What will you do with yours?

Chords

A snow storm moves in, blankets the ground and hides the mountain ranges from view, like nothing lies behind the houses at the other side of the field. I set up the therapy light at the top of the treadmill, make believe I am running along the river in spring time, make believe my steps move me somewhere, and from the way my legs burn I think they must be. The snow makes everything quiet, time makes everything fuzzy, I barely know you now but this morning I remembered what it was like to feel your skin under my fingertips, to hear your voice how it said my name. The country leaves you alone with your thoughts; I walk through them comfortably turning them over in the palm of my hand. There was a time I couldn't even look their way for fear I'd break. A story weaves and builds in my hands now, winter is long and dark but somehow, somehow I brought my own god damned sunshine and now I'll make this concrete garden grow.

The bridges have all stopped burning now, but you can come on in.

The water's fine,
just
fine.

Rise

(Morning is dark, again, quiet, you slip into the routine without a thought: steep coffee, write out the remains of night dreams, meditate into sunrise over the mountain. Your light therapy lamp shines in the pre-dawn hours but once that desert sunlight breaches the summit, how any other light is superfluous. The cows huddle in the pasture ahead of you, their slow meanderings an appropriate representation of your state of mind. Everything is slow in morning, but peaceful, happy.

Did you ever think I could be happy again? Because I doubted. This house is littered with pictures of other versions of me, and in each one all I see is something broken behind every pair of eyes. I knew how to smile, yes, and I knew how to laugh in brief moments of respite, but the laughs always rattled hollow inside my rib cage. But the sun rises, again again the sun rises and god damn if you won't do the same. This little light of mine, whispers the lamp, I'm going to let it shine.

And for the first time, in a long time, you know just what it means.)

Space 2 (Slow Waves)

A day flows beneath me, suddenly everything makes sense, I watch the sun rise over one mountain range and set behind the next, without leaving my desk by the window. At night, the moon beams across the valley like a spotlight, illuminating the snow and the silence. I have no more questions tonight.

Everything falls apart.
Everything but this.

Day 2

Wake with fear, with the reminder of ends lurking in your early beginning, you wish for limitless time, thinking if your cup was overflowing you'd be able to relax, be able to work. It is still dark out when I rise, but while the coffee steeps, dawn paints the snowy mountaintops pink, dusts away the cobwebs of wispy clouds, the valley is so quiet you can hear your soul breathe and it reminds you of all that you already know, and here's the thing, everything worth pursuing is terrifying as hell. 

I take a deep breath, watch the sunrise turn to fire on the mountainside, feel all the pieces line up inside me. A little girl stands at the end of the cursor, trusting you to return.

The Universe doesn't simply grant you wishes. You make your dreams come true, and just humbly give the credit away. 

I gave her every reason to. 

All This, For Me?

I wake early, too early, a quiet snow blanketing the blackness outside and I wonder what would happen if I just got up now. Anxious to get started. Anxious to milk every last drop of time out of the experience and already the end looms in the distance. The hours of silence are so few, so precious. My lungs expand with the West, my heart sinks into the little space I've carved and I know it was not easy to come by, but it is mine, now. All this, for me? I sit down with my piles of paper, with the little fire inside my chest that burns on unabated, I take a deep breath and begin to write.

All this,
for me.

With Views

Familiar returns can be made mysterious if you will it. They try to make your visit business as usual because they cannot see the way you are humming on the inside, how everything vibrates beneath your skin. You do not blame them. Ahead of you sits a desk at a window, ahead of you lies a smidgeon of time that is yours and yours alone, at the edge of the horizon the Wild West spreads out before you and says All this is yours now. You stack piles of paper, post-it notes, notebooks full of scribbles. Go to bed early. 

When dawn comes, adventure comes with it. 

You are ready.