Athens

There is something about the ease

Of a country road run

Of a day in the sun

Of forgetting the time and the demands 

That leaves you a little bit closer

To who you thought you were 

(And who you thought you could escape being

But that is not the point now)

Sure Know Now

I rush up Greenwich, swerve north on 8th Ave, overstuffed bag on my back and only assumptions of time in the mess of my head. Throw the bike at Penn Station and tie a mask back on my face before sinking into the underground. The train is empty, I pick a seat by the river, I'll not miss its quiet peace again.

I spent the morning procrastinating, in that indulgent way writers like to do, futzing about, jotting down illegible notes and pacing, panicking mildly by sorting through busy work that should have been attended months ago and which suddenly seem imperative, until finally sitting down to write and finding it already having written itself in my head while I tried to avoid it. They say there is no magic to writing, you just do it, but I think they don't know what magic is. It's the magic that keeps us coming back for more, the magic that makes us cut through that scar tissue again and let the light in, it's that once you have felt love at your fingertips everything else seems less than and you are no longer content to run it along your skin.

The train pummels down the track at sunset, cracks of pinks and apricots through amassing clouds, a trickling reflection of seaweed greens in the snaking river. Ahead, bands of lighting dance down the mountains. Eventually all goes black. I breathe deep into my mask, feel the sadness run out of me.

There is too much to life yet. My heart swells over in gratitude, and if that isn't magic,

then maybe I don't know what magic is,

either.

Motion

Do you know, the trouble with pain, is you spend so much time trying to just get over it, and never feel it again, that you make a subconscious deal with yourself to keep all the armor in place indefinitely. You start to forget what it was like to be delirious with joy, to smile in the depths of yourself, to feel, for just a moment, like life was easy. Ignorance is bliss, they say, or at least it's peaceful. If I can't remember the wild highs of joy I am able to reach, then perhaps I won't know to miss them.

I didn't think I'd be content just to settle.

But this scar tissue is so thick. The calls of the Life are too muted to hear.

Corals

I go to bed nearly on time, and wake at dawn from a hundred dreams. Do you remember in March, how much we dreamed? How much time our minds had to process the unearthed millenia? Everything races ahead now, but hobbling, like hubcaps spinning out of control after a traffic accident and eventually they just vibrate until they lie flat and still on the burning concrete. My tan is fading.

Renovations across the street carry on. I scroll through apartment listings like they have answers to questions I have yet to describe in words. Every day is a heatwave. My legs are so tired from crossing this island, but oh how I love it all the same. Love is what happens in crisis.

Do you remember what it was like to be happy?

Underwater

Days pass, run, fly past, tear at my limbs and demand things of me. I fall asleep in nightmares, and forget them as soon as I jolt awake. Heatwaves pummel the city, tsunamis of tumble dry heat, pools of sweat at every street corner, conditioner air scratching my throat and I run so slowly in the morning sun. I book another ticket out of the city.

When at last everything stops, I tumble into the proverbial grass of my livingroom couch, lie in apathy for a full day staring into high definitioned nothingness, feel myself falling out of my own hands, remember that this is what the centrifuge does and the answers evade me. I stare a little longer, set an alarm, write a to do list that only aims to remind me who I am. I begin to check it off.

And then, at last, a voice returns to me. Scrambled at first, rushing through the list, rushing through the day, it is distorted and distant, I only catch it in brief pauses between the traffic, but it comes back slow and steady like the tide until it is unmistakably here. On my screen, I look out a hundred other windows, find connections and distance all in one, look out my own window and remember I am, I am, I am, I look at my fingertips and see a thousand unwritten stories lay themselves out and begin to speak. The sun sets over a heatwave. A ticket lies in my inbox. I am, I am, I am. I disappear, sometimes, I fall into tangled pieces, but I always come back.

I'm always here, in the end.

Tappan-Zee

I stepped off the train and walked straight into oblivion. It takes days to unravel what Spring wound up, the stress of a city under siege sits in my muscle memory and I dare not trust the cool grass under my bare feet. We pack up the car and drive winding roads into the forest, lose reception, lose electricity, find a small glen with our names on it, build a little home for a few days. I swim in a quiet lake every day, wake to birdsong at dawn. We make fires at night, roast marshmallows and watch the sun set across the ridge. I run around the lake, trekking through forests that look like my childhood and I have just as much fun making it an obstacle course adventure now as in my youth, and perhaps that's what nature is. Permission to let yourself play. Permission to believe the whole world is an undiscovered piece of clay between your fingers, that you are insignificant and singular all at once. Perhaps it's only chemical and we never ventured further from our maker than that it will forever call us to it.

On the way back, I select a seat with a view of the river. Watch it lazily snake its way to the ocean, sometimes impossible to distinguish from when the first people settled here, wild and overgrown and comforting. I return to a steaming cauldron of iron and glass, return to concrete and hustle. But I have air in my lungs now I haven't felt in months. I have summer in my skin that will not wash off in the tub.

Gives Me More Time

Sometimes you gather red flags under your belt, thinking what does it matter to know better when you barrel ahead regardless? I pick the wrong side of the train, watching parking lots and wild vines instead of the Hudson River Valley, bury myself in work, try to forget that it is my first time breathing the air with other people in a contained space since it was still winter. I wipe down the seat with my antibacterial wipes.

It smells like 2020.

Wax

Some summer nights, when the air is cool, and the breeze is soft, and the people of New York are out, and for a moment it seems like everything is not falling to pieces in front of us,
your heart can break without a sound, and your chest be filled with a river of sadness, and it drowns you even as you are happy, and you feel there is a life you were meant to be living, and all the pieces are there, but they do not fit together like you wish they would,
and you aren't meant to make them.

Lag

Summer rushes ahead, I do not write. Our lives melt away into some pandemic oblivion, when we look back on this time in our lives, what on earth will we say? If only one had a way with words... The thing is we've gotten used to this wildfire, when all I really wanted was fireworks. The thing is you may think you've paid penance enough to earn a miracle, but the Universe doesn't care for your barter system and will not be manipulated into gift giving. You must carry on somehow in simple doldrums. My parents send harvest packages from the dream garden they've been able to rebuild from their youth. I run home along a Broadway suddenly alive again, and it's hard now to remember how deserted it was in April, this world undulates in a strange rhythm. The unfortunate thing about wasting time is that even knowing you've done it won't stop you from doing it again. We should leap into love, into adventure, into the unknown but instead we hedge our bets and slowly decompose in the familiar, even when control is an illusion.

It's hard to indulge in your convictions when they provide no guarantees. It's hard to believe everything will turn out right, when you don't know how far you are from the end of your story. Come find me, please, I'm lost in the woods and I think we'd have a better time running around blindly if at least we did it together.

Stumbling looks more like dancing when you do it with love.

of Glory

The diner where we broke up closes. I wish the world wasn't falling apart, but sometimes there is a poetic justice to the fire. I run mindless miles along the river, exchange platitudes with strangers. My song is silenced again but I have been reminded of the itch. Taxes are due. They buy new sheets because, as she says, it needed that female touch. You recoil. All I needed was a hug.

They say love is an addiction, it lights up all the parts of your brain that the drugs do, gives you the same irrational shakes when it goes. This year twists and turns us into tatters. All I needed was a gift from the Universe. But what is a sweet sunset if not a gift, what is a day in ocean waves, a letter in the mail, how dare you ignore your blessings. Be specific with your wishes.

Life is trying to tell you it is short, and impossible, and wondrous.

What magic did you give yourself
today?

A Year

I have some bad news, she writes, Sunday morning and the air is sweltering, but my steps on the pavement reliable, steady. I have started the morning happy. There's someone else. It's been going on for months. I'm just destroyed. I stop running. Think about how these news always seem to come with the apology at the start. (I'm sorry to have to ruin this for you.) I want to go to Brooklyn and punch him. Does he not see this year is bad enough as it is? But sure, it follows the fashion. 

We meet her later in the park, hot beautiful sunny Sunday afternoon, and when we spread out picnic blankets to sit six feet apart it feels like any other summer day this year, where the biggest concern is a deadly pandemic. I want to hug her but we just stare at each other and shrug. I haven't slept in two days. We pour her a big cup of wine. Ten years together swirls in the drain, wondering which way to go. All the threads that tie them together, that braided around them and it's hard to know what belongs to whom. I want to punch him more than ever. Before it gets dark, she gets back on her bike, goes home. We have nowhere else to go. This year makes fools of us, and we cannot pack our bags, cannot leave. We wish her sleep, if nothing else.

Along the water, a young couple gets engaged. The irony seems redundant. 

When I make my way back across the bridge, after dusk has turned on the twinkling lights of Manhattan, it rains. I cry behind the brightly colored mask I wear, forget how to push myself forward. All I needed was a hug. Instead this year is one long slap in the face. If you could tell us the lesson we're meant to be learning, perhaps we could get through this quicker.

Fay

A tropical storm blows in from the south, drowning the streets and pausing my renegade spiral. I run along the river just before it appears, a cool breeze in the air and ominous clouds on the horizon, but my legs carry me further down the island than they have in weeks and I am grateful for the lightness in my step. How we are all just one good moment from relief. A few jobs trickle in, a short instant of catching my breath, and it is plenty. I go to sit in a neighbor's empty kitchen to work, try to let the words settle around me, watch the storm as it catches its breath. Sometimes when the voices around me quiet there is nothing else there. Perhaps the eye of the hurricane is a gift and we forget. Perhaps peace in the midst of a storm is as good as it gets.

Take a deep breath now.

Get while the getting's good.

Wait for It

After 27 years, I become an immigrant.

I see the frailty of a foundation I only ever assumed. How the ribbons curling from my heart to this ground are only decoration, and the actual bonds from my feet to the soil can be overturned, can be pulled up at the root and I evicted from a place I thought was mine. A narrative of proving worth writes itself in the back of my head, years ago I wrote I spent years... unraveling all the stability I'd created and perhaps now here I am, arriving at the end of that road with nothing left but the proverbial shirt on my back, stories in my pockets. Everything is falling apart except this one thing, except this singular delusion that I have one ace up my sleeve and now that I have at last relieved myself of every other cushion, I must play it.

I must play this card,
and it has to win the pot.

After 27 years, I am firmly in the game of an American Dream now, a game of the House always wins, my skin and blood are on the table now where I never saw them before. Let me put them back on my body. Let me put them back on a foundation no one can take from me.

I'm building this shirt on my back into a fortress.

Gentle

Two steps forward,
two steps back.
You hope that at least something turns, or twists, or can look different from another angle.
We sat on the factory roof in the late evening, watching Manhattan turn to fire and ice in the waves of twilight, trying to make sense of the world. The bottles were emptying themselves at leisure, and everything had that perfect hum about it like summer evenings are wont to do. We tried to find answers to riddles disguising themselves as dreams, and all the while I tied little pieces of string between my limbs and their, string after string, knot after knot, checking to make sure they held fast. How perfect a moment can be, how kind. I've been crying less, recently, but I wonder if it's just a trick of the lights. My shoulders are turning brown, did you see?

Everything tastes better when you hunger.

Rockaway

You wake heavy, reluctant, knowing you’ll need convincing for every step. You wait for the coffee to steep with your eyes closed. Consider the feel of currents against your skin. Check work email and run a list of your obligations past your forehead. Think of freckles on your shoulders. Think of deep breaths and wide horizons. At last the arguments are superfluous. I stuff things in a bag, hop on a bicycle, and make my way to the edge of the island, where the boats to the outer world lie.

I barely have time to deposit my bags on the sand before I race down the slope to the water’s edge. Greet the ocean like a friend, like a cure, I dive into the first wave that will have me. Let it wash the heat off me, the weight. I roll around in the surf and feel eight years old again. When I at last step out and make my way to the warm sand, it’s as though the last few months have been erased from my muscle memories, as though I can hear again my own voice inside my head.

Oh we have been so buried so deep of late.

But for a short moment today, I believe we can make it back up again.

Day

We cannot celebrate freedom

Until we are free. 

More of Us

(It’s hard to put into words, that which exists in veins, hard to distill that which has exploded into your every cell, it’s hard to remember how full your cup when it flowed after it has left you bled dry. America you great unfinished symphony, do you remember a time when we believed in your song, when we believed we could keep writing it? Every day crumbles around us now. The revolution returns. If a song can break your heart only to build it back up again, don’t you think we have a chance, after all?)

Take Heart

Every day teeters on the brink of a chasm, I forget it is there and stumble when I attempt to be dancing. The fall is so long, so dark every time, I've climbed up that well so many times and still I doubt I'll make it again. So much for relying on experience.

Early in the morning, before the heat licks the city immobile, the riverside is busy. The promise of a new day, a few minutes of peace, Beach Body 2021 (in case we have beaches, or bodies, then), I went for a run without thought, tried to reduce myself to only these muscles, only these steps in front of each other. I keep trying to put one metaphorical foot in front of the other too, but I seem perpetually perched on this moving walkway in the wrong direction. I seem perpetually dragged to inertia, and never safe from the bottom rocks at the end. Just hours ago, was I not smiling, convinced I'd unearthed hitherto unseen secrets and now how these secrets dilute themselves in tears along my skin? I look at lifelines and know I cannot call them, know I couldn't tell the truth if they picked up, Oh no I just wanted to say hello. The dog paces around my door, smelling despair, but she's easily distracted by smoke screens, and haven't I spent a lifetime perfecting those? Would you like a treat?

This is the part of the story where the writer neatly ties the endings together, expertly crafts a lesson and maybe leaves you with a wink, or a smile, or a warm feeling in your chest like everything is going to be alright and isn't life a marvel after all.

But maybe I'm not a writer. Maybe I'm just a collection of jagged edges and recurring chasms, sprinkled with loose promises and strings of words. Maybe the ends are too frayed to hold this weight
in.

Tonopah

Somewhere in between the deep breaths it happens. Visions of clarity stream past my closed eyelids, speaking to me of years past, of selves past. They remind me of a time when my chest was built on sunlight, when my plans all lay in a future. When I wake, I thumb through old words for confirmation, and find them readily available. It has its ups and downs, I write, but if I didn't want it, I wouldn't put up with so much shit for it... Because when you get that one perfect phrase, find that moment of flow... Everything else falls away, becomes irrelevant. 

It makes severy single sorrow worth it.

It's easy to get swept up in the socially revered goals of a life and an age, easy to compare yourself to lives you never even asked to live. I have spent so many years consumed by loss, an easier focus than that of accomplishment. But all the right gifts walked into your life when you were not asking for them, when you were busy building ladders to the stars instead of waiting for them to fall down. If this year teaches us anything it is that we cannot control everything, in fact we can control almost nothing. Put one foot in front of the other. Be your own magic.

Lightning bugs cannot find each other 
in the dark.