or Fire

I wake early, too early, the street is still dark and quiet, save for a few grumbles from those who live below my window, and a man walking his dog. Windows are dark down the avenue, it feels like jet lag. I am awake when I should not be. I am awake when the world belongs to only me.

I brought back coffee to the warmth of my bed, pulled out a book, like the hours were a gift. The lightness in my body is back, all the dread ran out of it yesterday with the appearance of cherry blossoms, with miles beneath my feet. The burning in my chest, however, remains. I don't want to tell you about it, yet, we all know too much now what the embers mean, it's the only thing we know anymore. Have you noticed the sirens go missing? There's not much to yell about when everything is a state of emergency. It's time to look for a thermometer. I wonder if yelling exacerbates it.

But the cherry blossoms bloom early in Brooklyn this year, earlier perhaps than ever, the daffodils have all but drowned the East River promenade and the ginkgos are sprouting on southfacing streets, we are dying by the thousands but the Universe is not. I've seen the lights go out on Broadway, but there's more to it than that.

Cake or Death

Some days are fine
some, a little bit harder

You try, so hard you try to tread the water enough to keep yourself above the surface, to keep everyone you can hold on to breathing for another day and yet when you sink, how you only remember that you failed. You feel an unwelcome burn in your chest, wonder if its tendrils are what's causing your head to ache, wonder if it's connected to that woozy feeling in your legs when you stand, but sometimes our minds play tricks on us and it doesn't seem fair to blame that on a virus you cannot see. Perhaps it's only weather.

But they shut the city down for another few weeks today, they closed the gates and twisted the daggers, they scared our hearts and it's hard to see through all the numbers anymore, because it turns out the numbers were people, only the supreme leader forgot what that meant. The strain in my chest does not. It counts, and counts, and counts.

You count.

That's something else, entirely.

Jurassic

I needed a win, she says, two weeks into isolation and deep into the mire, when the puzzle pieces fall in her favor. We make colorful cocktails early in the afternoon now, the only way to distinguish weekdays from weekends because every day is Pajama Day if you want it. I build sourdough starters, roll bagels, there is fresh potting soil on the window sill and a queued up youtube video on how to fix a plumbing issue on my computer, when crisis hits we see who we truly are and suddenly you long for a house in a country, everything is upside down.

But I see it now, you know. I got a chance to stop and catch up with myself and it reminded me: life is not so short, but oh, is it precious. You are too good to live a life you do not like. Remember that.

If you do not like it, though,
you're the one who has to make a change.

TGIF

At least it's almost the weekend, we say, as if the days of the week mean anything, anymore. As if we will not carry on through the same routine tomorrow again, drinking too early in the daytime and scrambling to have accomplished anything at all by night. We'll be exchanging puzzles in the park, she announces. I'll wipe it down before I bring one home.

Outside the window, this imperative barrier visible only through the dust on its shield, spring beams and boasts with soaring temperatures and mild breezes. I long to go out into it, to run off whatever creaks and moans sit in my lungs I long for a short moment of freedom. It's hard to be an urbanite when you were raised by wolves.

But I guess everything's hard now. At least there's comfort in that.

Zoom

Another quiet morning. Sidewalks empty, streetlights beaming for no one but pigeons. I get up early, but it's hard to remember why. I follow routines, but it's unclear to what they may lead. On cold days, frazzled urbanites leave the river and me alone; I run long stretches without meeting another person. It seems a healthier alternative. Everyone feels symptoms in their fragile bodies. Reports say we may be hallucinating, but also that it's highly likely we are sick without knowing, there is no certainty. We begin to unravel, laughing at the slightest hilarity, crying at every obstacle. It is a lesson in humanity, in what we carry with us. I'm sure I have it, he writes, but when the pieces are broken apart, the tears look more like grief than illness, how cruel that we are complex.

But the cherry blossoms are gathering energy, the evenings begin to stretch late into the night, when traffic is quiet instead we can hear the birdsong. Some things continue to be here, even when we fear we've lost it all.

Remember: you never have lost it all.

Molly

I'm not writing, she says from across the island. We are all spending our time just trying to make it out alive. Sometimes I think the zombie apocalypse would be easier. We send memes, demand recipes, my phone runs out of batteries several times a day, how are we so busy and yet so empty all at once. I begin to bake bread, find comfort in the routine, in the reliability of chemistry. I walk slowly around the manuscript, begin to run my fingers along its edges, dare to believe in familiarity. The river was full of people, but the avenues are quiet, the whole world is different. Even Patti Smith says she has trouble finding her own words, so how could you possiblhy be any better?

We are all lost, right now,  there's a collective screech and jumble upsetting the equilibrium but remember: once we stop, we can take a deep breath.

Once we take a deep breath, we have the chance to find ourselves again.

Tails

I've washed my hands into oblivion, by now, they shrivel and wither under my efforts. My fingers look like those of my future, 80-year-old self, an interesting reflection in a time when all we have is reflection time. We are all making sacrifices. You check in on the cherry blossoms to no ends at all, it's a habit you allow yourself while a freezing rain tries to wash the streets empty. Count the coins under your couch cushions, calculate how long they'll give you a home with a couch to begin with. The puzzle nears completion (the actual, physical puzzle; everything else remains scattered) and you wonder what's next. The to do lists are long, but unappealing, much like the ample supply of dried goods in your pantry. YouTube videos on how to fix trickling faucets, revealing nothing of how long the project has sat untouched thus far. These are different times now, the clock has been reset.

The thing is I dream of vast landscapes, and stories untold, I dream of long walks down deserted city streets, and wondrous adventures in the South Pacific, when the street grew quiet outside my window, the world behind my eyelids roared back into life, do you know one day when I was very young I told my father I would grow up to be a writer not because it seemed the smart thing to do but because when I get a minute to myself all I have are stories bursting to come out, because underneath this thin veneer all I am is one meandering tale after another, it's so quiet out now, don't you see?

The madness out there helps me hold it back.

And maybe now I don't have to.

Night

It took me a while to realize why I couldn't sleep, why I suddenly heard every word emanating from the television in the next room, why everything was off kilter, and then it hit me: the street was quiet outside, Seccond avenue still and dark on a Saturday night, everything upended. They write to say someone tested positive and suddenly the last of your work slips through your fingers. It's a strange new world and yet something wondrous lingers in the back of your mind. Something is going to come of this, it's making its way through your system, it's arranging itself with white blood cells inside your skin.

You do not yet know how things will shape themselves.

Maybe for once you do not have to.

Savage

We bolster the chasms with humor, filling our screens with ridiculous wit, filling the hours with whims of the universe, tomorrow the city closes and who knows when we will come out. On a crooked Bowery street corner, we say goodbye like it's see you later but everything in the air around us whispers that we do not know when we'll see each other again. The river is crowded, again, but come nightfall, second avenue lies quiet and dark, it's disorienting. I forget to write. Every day is just letting hours pass to see what may happen.

But here's the thing.

It's when you stop counting the hours, when you truly finally forget how they fit in a calendar we've been taught owns us, that the things begin to happen. It's when we finally give in to the futility of our trying to gain control over a universe that we do not own, when we finally relax into the waves of its chaos, that we will learn the secrets which hide within us. The cherry blossoms in Brooklyn Botanic are blooming without anyone to see them.

There's a lesson in there. Wait, you will see.

Void

The city quiets. Streets are drained of people, arteries full of air, I walk four miles down Broadway through a town changed. Times Square still blaring its bright lights into the atmosphere but everything ground level is black. Herald Square a serene haven for the homeless, now, and in Madison Square Park I stand in the middle of the intersection to take a picture, no cars around to stop me. Stay Home, they told us, and so, for once, we listened. Everything goes under, resturants close at the drop of a pin, do not even try to make it through what promises to be a long, unforgiving winter.

Yet in Brooklyn Botanic, the first cherry blossoms have popped on the Esplanade, with no one allowed to see it. In Union Square, the magnolias are bursting, and all through the West Village, the linden trees bubble and froth into existence. Spring is springing.

These flowers do not mind your pandemic plague, do not care for your human panic. The sun is out, the temperature is right, and so they bloom, because now is when that is done. What do they care the end of your world may be nigh. The seasons, after all, have been here before we arrived, and they will carry on long after we are so inevitably erased from their memories.

It is spring, now, and in spring they live.

We'd do well to try it, ourselves.

Crisis

The news cycle twists and undulates, rises and falls with unpredictable tides, every alert is approached with caution. A new life begins to arrange and rearrange itself in our muscles: no more shopping, no more brunch on Sunday, get to know your roommates real well. A month from now you will either leave your partner or marry them, there may be no in between. Rumors float of imminent lockdowns, those inclined to panic remind you to get what you need, but haven't we all been hoarding for days, what more could we possibly want?

I take long walks, now, I climb bridges and cross rivers, I weave through skyscraped neighborhoods to find friendly faces, we are reduced to our most human selves: see and be seen, touch and be touched, be reminded who we are. The world is reduced to what I can reach on these two feet, but it also expands to bring to the tips of my fingers everyone in my phone book, this is a blessing. When we come out of this, blinking into the sunlight and surveying the strange land around us, don't think we will be the same as when we went in.

Don't think we won't have found miracles in the madness.

Code

Overnight, the city turns leaves. Every breath, every step, is a breaking alert, a new decree. New Yorkers huddle in their homes, step tentatively outside, ask each other are we still doing this? and no one has answers for more than the next subway car. Seen the lights go out on Broadway. World weary millenials rave about falling airfare but don't quite dare to pull the trigger. We count the bottles in the liquor cabinet and wonder how to prioritize our limited Manhattan storage space. Short surges of excitement are replaced by dread. Do you remember when the hurricane hit? Do you remember the planes? Shelves at the fancy organic grocery gape empty, panicked faces bumble through long lines, while the regular old corner store is weary with Lower East Side grit, unlimited rice and beans, angry Russian ladies, they're an anodyne. Message chains burn through overworked phones, are we terrified or excited, is this our chance to take a step back, recharge, who do we want to be when the storm abates?

Dark clouds amass on the horizon. We're running slow motion into the winds now. Hold on tight, little monkey, we're in for a bumpy ride.

Edit

The trees are budding now, little sprouts puffing up and stretching out at the ends of thin winter limbs. Washington square park bulges and shivers with unbelieving people, smiling into warm evenings in disbelief. A pandemic waits around the corner, neck and neck with spring, and the little human struggle to make sense of the outcomes. Toilet paper shelves lie bare in supermarkets but the bar is full on a Tuesday night, we have to still be humans somehow. I wrote some truths into a book but truths have nothing on the strengths of our hearts, she says after our first date I called my mother to say I’m going to marry him, and you know what she means, but reluctantly, so what do we call that? There isn’t hand sanitizer enough in the county for this scourge.

Tomorrow we may all be quarantined.

Stock up on toilet paper all you want. In the end you’re still stuck with yourself.

of the Times

Hell's Kitchen on a Saturday, endless reminders of alienation but at last a spot at the bar and a drink. The play is long, and monologous, but the actor well-known so the audience laughs along in his nudges. We leave unimpressed. The subway home is an exercise in humanity: who flinches at a cough, who demands the seat to not need the pole, who tries to hold their breath. In a month none of this may matter. The actor yells, I did nothing to deserve this, and that turns out to be his point.

I did nothing.

You get a short reprieve to collect yourself, now, a few moments to relish the nothing. But your to do list is long, and you know how it begins.

Wash your hands. It's time to step up.  

Rhyme

(There was a moment
tonight
sitting in their kitchen window and watching midtown Manhattan sparkle like an impossible treasure in the deep sea,
seeing the Empire State Building reach and rise into the darkness,
that reminded me how New York arrived to me like a dream,
how I made it here over, and over again only by the conviction of my love,
by the fire in my chest lit long before I knew a single one of these streets under my feet,
And how now, all these years later, even just a glimpse of its jewels from a seventh floor window will throw me right back to the very first time I fell in love with it, will pull me through the 4,935 times I have fallen in love in love since,
how when all is said
and done,
Love is not measured, does not ascribe to your rhymes and reason, only ever follows
its own magic
And all we can do is follow it,
All we can do is sit in a window and let love take our breath away
4,936 times more.)

Rescue

At 6:30, the phone buzzes with words like spring flowers against your drowsy senses. You smile into the sunrise and don't want to fall back asleep. The season of early rises is here; you will not be filing complaints. I went for a long run along the river, smiling at strangers, counting the blossoms. On 6th street, I passed a tree trembling with buds and burst into tears, I am not worried.

When I tell you good things are on their way, I mean it. When I tell you I had a long speak with the Universe across glittering waters, believe me, I knew exactly what those good things might be.

Keep putting one foot in front of the other. The things you dream will arrive, when you do.

Attract

Second Avenue early in the morning is mild, now, is sunshine and birdsong and life. You count down to Daylight Saving and see it is not far, count down to returning to your life and see she is already stretching and yawning at the edge of your vision. The woman's voice lilts across your closed eyelids, reminds you to breathe, tells you to picture the life you want and let yourself step into it. You smile into the warm light on your cheeks, revisit the days you know will come, remember the flowers already blooming along the river.

All good things will come. You better make sure you're ready when it does.

Marches

The thing is I’m not worried. The thing is this heart is beating out of my chest, these new green buds on the trees make every breath burst off my lips, these eyes refuse not to sparkle, I’m not worried.

The thing is I know all good things are on their way. It looks like they are here, now, it looks like they are close enough to touch but until you are actually touching them you have no idea how good things can be. The thing is sometimes love takes the long way around but don’t you see? Every winter ends, sometime. Spring always arrives, whatever way it takes to get there.

The thing is we get there.