Positively

I think about not coming back, she writes from her Midwestern refuge in a parental guest room. I don't know what there is to come back to.

I walk through the West Village early in the morning, Washington Square park abandoned in the cold, gray morning and West Fourth Street hibernating under a blanket of quiet. If the neighborhood is a movie set, shooting has wrapped and only a few PAs remain to walk the proverbial dogs. I take my time looking into crooked courtyards, hypothesize over building years and what the neighborhood might have looked like when this house was new or that. I take deep breaths and do not hurry, tell the Universe I'm out here looking for answers, tell the air it's almost May and in May I itch to move, what will it be this time? They say make no drastic changes in a crisis but I would wager the opposite be wiser. Did we not build the word itself by combining to separate, choose, decide and forming nouns of action or process? Did we not create the language after the tidal wave, did we not attempt to make human that which appeared bigger than us? The drastic change is already here; ride the wave and you will not drown. Enjoy the ride and you need not fear.

This city is reduced now to the size my feet can cover in a day.

Oh, but it is immense.