Grus

Morning arrives early, but slow, I am pulled out of strange dreams like taffy, an enormous mansion and what can one do with so much old space, it sits as both a gift and a menace in the creaking space between my shoulder blades. Perhaps I was never a morning person. My client is already six hours ahead and well into a work week, as I sit staring at the late summer sky, missing my characters on the page. Mommy has to work, you scoff, as your to do list grows beneath your fingernails. It's not even going to get hot today. 

Unassuming Monday, unassuming last day of August, fourteen years ago I arrived bright eyed and unbelieving into this city and now look at me, tired and ragged but never happier. 

Do you hear me, New York? If you put all these knives in front of me again I'd still take them, so long as you held my hand like you have. I'd take every broken bone and every bruise, so long as you were still mine. Fourteen years is nothing. We have so much farther to go.

Bellyache

I know my brain twists and turns away from me, goes on long winding journeys while my feet pound away the miles of pavement beneath, I know I put words in your mouth and smiles on your face through no choice of yours and step back to marvel at the beauty I've created. I know I build sandcastles in my headclouds and stories in my fingertips, they told me as a child I had a vivid imagination but weren't they really trying to say I was strange and they didn't know what to do with me? I grew up in magical woods, you cannot take this treasure away from me now. I grew up with limitless worlds on the tip of my tongue, this power is all I have, when I walk down the street it does not look to me like it does to you, every concrete block dances in words, I see layers on layers of other, by the time you really smile at me I have already written our demise, such is life, I am working on it. 

Reality by any other word is really only magic.

Hope & Change

 I haven’t seen any four-leaf clovers, lately. I forget to look, the days seem to pass with just enough sparkle that I don’t require it to get by. They race past me in blues, the years amass and I’m not yet sure what I have to show for it but these piles of love, they’ll never earn you stripes but is it possibly enough to just have put smiles into the world? You weigh accomplishments to compare and contrast, remind yourself the solution is to step back up again, how much time you lose to the toll of the Red Queen, you wonder if it isn’t time again to swim in poetry, let it soften your question marks. 

You book new tickets, pack bags big and small. Look for four-leaf clovers again. 

Consider that maybe they’re a metaphor within you, instead. 

Ohana

You book a plane ticket, rusty like you don't quite remember how, and then try to find in the back of your spine the satisfaction for which you normally itch. September entices with a number of adventures and you shrug indifferently, unable to believe them until they are there. I vow not to pass them by for that reason alone. 

Do you remember how your eyes alone made me be a little better? How your voice reminded me there was something worth trying for? I forget to expect that sometimes. But I know adventure when it comes, know the soar in my gut on the precipice, there's a ticket in my inbox and a new season on the horizon, there's a breath in my lungs the year has not taken from me, if you look me in the eyes I swear I will look right back and oh, you won't know what hit you.

38

 There is too much to say and too few hours left to say it, before alarms ring and reality returns. You are a year older. Waves of gratitude sweep across your chest. Family is what you make it and any tears are only from how tired you are, you take it out on those closest to you. Their silences cut you and you have to remind yourself not to see ghosts where there are none. The day was sunshine, warmth, delirious love letters to New York and when at last I sailed across the Williamsburg bridge home I remembered what it was to return to this city after too long away, after fearing I had lost it for good. New York you are the only thing that always felt right, New York you have healed me time and time again when I thought I was forever broken. I know you are tired now, love, it is unbearable to live sometimes and go on living but oh, how just a moments sunshine can turn your heart around. A year lies ahead with secrets, and mysteries, and promises. 

Rest now, a bit my love, tomorrow we’ll unwrap them all. 

When I’m 64

Eves are strange in adulthood. We know too much and yet nothing at all. I arrive home in the early evening to a spread of presents and foods and silly soliloquy. We are different to each other in the pandemic. Everything matters more. WellWishes begin to pour in but they are muddled, you do not know how to explain a life yet. 

Go to bed late, with champagne bubbling through your system and gratitude coursing through your veins, I ride the west side al the way down tonight in a beautiful sunset and still nothing is better than love. A country in ruins cannot take that away from you. 

You stand on the precipice of another year. Previous dawns have been enticing, teasing fortune, but you are older now, surely, wiser. The treasures you see ahead may actually be real. 

You are a year older. It means nothing, except confetti in your book pages. Nothing, except gratitude bursting at the seams. 

Don't Wake Me I'm Not Dreaming

For once, I let the jukebox run. I don't cut it off before it gets to that spot I know always hurts. I don't brace for impact, or skip quickly through the catalogues to easier times. I barrel through that song where you first touched me, I sit through the song that whispered to me how I loved you and it was too soon to say. I turn up the volume at the song that you used to tell me you no longer loved me and before the song was over you'd completely walked away. It took a while to be able to hear them without tensing at the scar tissue, but here we are. I think of your skin and do not even flinch. I smile into unknown eyes and do not feel sad. I can stand in the ocean waves now and only feel water.

I regret none of this. The music is good. It always was. 

And bittersweet still has the word sweet in it.

I'll Think About That Tomorrow

Gone With the Wind is introduced now by a okay but just in case you missed this and you wonder again at how young this country, how near its history. How it is still being built, and inadequately. You speak with other immigrants and try to make sense of the dreams that brought us, and if they are the same that keep us. 

Because something still keeps us. 

An old white man continues to ramble, but sometimes even they get it right. Fuck off if you can't hack it in this city when the going gets tough. The comment section is full of derision. Florida can have you. I contemplate bringing a car, bringing more of my things, etching my jagged edges into every square inch of this concrete and smoothly weaving my sweat and skin into its fabric. The truth is we've fallen for stories of dreams rather than the dreams themselves, the truth is what it is to be human is to live in stories, the truth is we have nothing if we do not have the belief in the tales we've been told. This city is a sermon, told again and again by preachers of every kind on every street corner, regaled to the new and bright eyed, rehashed to the jaded, edited, shortened, fleshed out, revised, but always told. Leaving the city now is putting the book down before you've read the ending. Leaving the city now means you do not pick it back up, and then what'll you have. This city is scripture, I believe in it like god and just like god are we the faithful not the ones who created it? Who recreate with every breath, with every turn of its merry-go-round? 

I keep paying the fare. 

Wink at the operator to let me go another round. Tell the story again like I got away with it.

Bears

Their little eyes beam from behind the gate, curious hunger and they've long since forgotten any prudent fear of humans. Like bandits with Disneyfied choreography, the raccoons make their way across the terrace: we try our best to shoo them away but give up eventually and cede the space. They play with the dog's toys, as she watches them curiously from behind the glass door. 

I spent the day in writing bliss, a whole span of day meant only for digging in, for revolving around a world I created out of nothing. What magic is this, this life, this summer, this dream of how to spend one's days. A lilting accent drifts across your ear drum but you are in no rush to sticky tape yourself to it. It is summer yet, there are words in your lungs and highways stretching out in every direction. Should you not stretch your limbs to catch their gifts first, should you not fill your baskets with summer harvests and see who might want to share in your riches? Let them come, I have plenty to share. 

Let life come. 

I have plenty yet to live.

Velos

The stars are dimmed, tonight, we walk the dog under strange glimmering dusk blues above and everything is quiet. The bats flew around earlier but they’ve gone to bed now, the dreams flew around earlier but you’ve gone to bed now, tomorrow is another day. We hiked up a mountain to a warm waterfall and felt our toes lose track of the bottom, little minnows nibbling at them as we caught a rock on which to stand. I breathe better with water on my skin, the blood in my mind realigns, everything makes sense. I sleep heavy sleeps in the country quiet, what dreams may come? 

I invite them in

readily. 

Wishewood

Twilight is breathtaking as we venture across the George Washington Bridge, motley buildings of downtown Manhattan playing like a symphony against the soft brush strokes of peach and periwinkle. By Paramus, night approaches and when we at last turn down the unmarked country road in through dense woods, everything is pitch black. Stars burst out above us. The dog pacces anxiously at the edge of a porch light before retreating to her cushion, and we eat reheated chili only shortly before midnight: here is the country, now. The pine floors creak of unknown residents, everything smells of generations of uncleared debris. There is a typewriter in my room from the 70s, hideous, but not out of place.

By morning, a new world lies at our feet. I wake early, but rested, the country vacuum a tonic for Avenue sleepers and I have long, intricate dreams that will not matter in the long run. The estate slopes gently toward quiet waters, a breeze meanders through the foliage. We work, but easily. I adapt too well to static and forget that there is reason to change one's scenery, if only briefly. I adapt well to boxes, and forget that my lungs were made for a challenge. We work, but not for long. 

There is life left to live
after all.

Effect

Sometimes the silences speak louder, telling you things you never heard in words. It is reassuring, somehow, you turn them over in your hands and wonder what to make of them. On my way back from the river, I run into a neighbor's super, he shows me empty apartments, little shoeboxes on sixth street and my skin tingles with opportunity. It's delicious just to dream, isn't it? I run into the neighbor later, too, we set a timer and refill beer glasses on the corner. With only an hour it's fortunate we are both New Yorkers enough to speak a mile a minute. 

I come home, pack my bags for escape. August runs away underneath me, but every now and then is there not a glimmer of hope? Set your alarms. The future is arriving now.

Tunnel

August races ahead, summer drawing to a close and the spectre of an unprecented fall looming on the horizon. My skin is pale, still, no salt lingering on my brow like I have come to expect. I meet a friend in Tompkins Square Park, her family hasn't left the house since March and I see her sanity circle the drain. It's nice out here, she says, as spontaneous dance parties emerge and musical trios rehearse beside us. I nod. People talk of leaving and I don't quite know how to relate. The evening winds feel like fall now, but I think our love is deep in its richest summer throes, producing all manner of ripe fruit despite the storms and droughts and unforeseen locust plagues. We may be beaten down, New York, but I will lean on you and you will lean on me and won't we be that much stronger when we get out on the other side?

We will get out on the other side. 

We have no idea yet what wonders await us there.

How To: Spring Clean All areas (of your life)

There are 35 tabs open in my browser. They tell me everything there is to know about living one's best life -- in New York, in poverty, in a pandemic. They do not tell of how to get through a downpour at Veselka on a Monday night. Do not tell how to keep your shoes dry in the floods, how to tip a server who gives you the beers for free because he can not deliver them to you, do not tell you how to make it home without losing some of your dignity on first street after months of drought. Your roommate tells you she has to move back in with her parents, it's a cruel year. The other roommate brings home chocolate from a wedding shower that was secretly a baby shower, it's a surprising year but aren't they all. You remind yourself not to exist as someone else's puzzle piece but it's hard when they like so much how your edges fit. You like to fit. 

Your mother asks if you want to come west to pick up a car, pick up your heirlooms, pick up a life. Your roommate tells you she's moving out. You wonder what else is next. 

Vow to see the adventure, rather than the edge of the cliff.

gifts

I stumbled,
I know. 

I wanted to do better, but I didn't.
For a brief moment I had something to lose
and I didn't want to, oh
how desperately I didn't want to I
have lost things so dreadfully before I thought
maybe the Universe would let me have this one thing anyway it

doesn't matter I'll forget soon enough thank
you for letting me hold this spark in my chest for just a
while

it reminded me what chests were meant to
hold
at all.

Stand By

On the run home, my phone dies. I stop somewhere in Chelsea, a puddle of sweat and the August sun setting mildly across the Hudson, trying without success to encourage it at least to get me home. New York at the end of summer is a strange scene any year, but this year it has changed its palette entirely. The apartment across the street is still empty, my roommate says I think he's the one and cannot believe her own words, the world is still full of wonder. I wake in a cold sweat with dreams of my phone exploding and melting onto my hand, my lips whispering fuck as I come to. I find an old phone and fire it up, find pictures from another life, reminders of who I was and for once it doesn't cut through my thin plaster. We are surviving the end of the world, you don't think I can handle a little heartache? New smiles appear at the opposite end of the table, old friends move a thousand miles, we are surviving the end of the world,

you don't think we can get through the start
of a new one?

of the Closing Doors Please

I rode the subway today. For the first time since the world collapsed I ran down dirty steps at 2 Ave to a familiar underground air, as though nothing had happened and I knew just the way. I had to buy a new metro card, where was my old one, did I stow it away in a museum, frozen in time to remember lives past, it got stuck when I swiped it and the Brooklyn bound F train arrived with a tailspin the second I flirted down the stairs and tears found themselves stuck in my throat at the sight. Here we are like nothing. The sounds were the same, the voice in the train car, the light in the tunnel. A new voice reminds us to keep our masks on. Everyone is properly spaced out and still, as if waiting. We collectively hold our breaths, waiting for the world to end. 

I went to the beach, to the ocean, my source of reset. The sea was in a tumult, waves crashing and the beach painted in red flags, the horizon wiped out by fog and the behemoth apartment complexes shrouded in mystery. I took deep breaths and tried to see the future. It was as opaque as the view. A rainstorm pulled in before my shoulders even turned brown. I jumped in the waves, let them beat me for a while, then pulled on damp sandy clothes and trekked back to the A train. I saw your face on the screen today, asking for love. 

But this isn’t it. All I have is grains of sand. 

Bridge

 The pennies follow me around the city, I see them heads up on street corners and in bar entrances, they glimmer at me through my runs along the river, and every time I forget I needed a boost they arrive with a little dose of magic. I don’t pick them up. Do I not dare believe they are meant for me? Do I brazenly believe I can share the wealth? The days carry on, so I am not unlucky. The world crumbles around me, perhaps the pennies can do better work elsewhere? 

An adventure appears in my periphery. I turn it over in my hands as if you can know the end result of a free fall before even climbing the height. There was a time when you would have just talked yourself into jumping, and then reveling in how you navigated the jagged rocks where they stuck out. Age has made you soft. Or maybe scars have made you hard. Life has made you tired. But there’s so little left of it, maybe even less than you think. 

Pick up those pennies. Count them later, spend them first, if you don’t set things on fire how will you see where you have gone?

Send

 You were always a sucker for a deadline. 

It approaches like a storm on the horizon, and you scramble to assemble a shelter around you. Watch the thunder and lightning around you in awe, happy with the structure as it trembles in the wind. 

I've lost things in storms before, you know. Everythings. I don't want to do it anymore. 

So if you offer me the world, I may turn it down. 

I haven't learned yet, how it might be to say yes
again.

Begin

There’s a curve in the river, just north of Tappan-Zee bridge, where you see the skyline of Manhattan bobble its peaks like stalagmites in the distance. Unconsciously, I take a deep breath and the space between my shoulder blades softens.

Coming back to New York is a wonder, every time. It is a reminder that I have gone through fire and survived, that I have been shattered but my pieces are all put back together, I am more glue than original parts and now that glue is me. Coming back to New York is soft kisses on scraped summer knees, is trust falls and ice cold Coca-Cola on a grueling sunny day, coming back to New York is someone saying I see your glue let us not pretend it is not there, you are more glue than original parts and why don’t you take your shoes off, stay awhile?

The train is cool, my legs are brown. A hurricane looms on the horizon, a catastrophic fall waits in the wings, if the jumbled Manhattan skyline can make my jagged pieces seem to fit with ease, who am I to argue? I am so tired of arguing, mi amor, I am ready to run my fingertips over these jigsaw pieces and feel only the smoothness, how well they fit together after all, see how I’ve taken my shoes off
when
will it be you
who stays?

Stretch

Eventually, your mind runs itself tired. You let it circle the last few paces down to the ground, drifting like a feather before settling at last and letting you sleep. Your cup is 90% despair these days, all heavy mercury at the bottom and sticky tar along the rim, but you are determined to make it through this year with at least one thing to bring you joy in the years to come. You are determined to look back on this year and see at least one precious gift it offered; that is the great benevolence you choose to bestow upon a time that otherwise broke every bone in your body, that otherwise left you in tatters. I will not let you hurt me so much that you cannot recover. What strange fallout from abuse. I will not let me see it this way.

Summer roars into its stretch of Sundays, I pack up my upstate bag and swing one last round past the pool. Pretend to forget my sunscreen. Tomorrow a hurricane will visit Manhattan but I am not angry. I have work to do.

Come wash us clean. Blow the last of this gravel from my eyes. I am determined to see the gift, when it arrives.

Rain Day

When I wake, the skies are overcast, the Sunday morning streets dull with stasis. I lace my sneakers before my body really wakes, make my way up a sleeping Main Street,  turn right on the country road, and begin to run the undulating landscape on autopilot. The rain starts right at the halfway mark, and picks up steadily as I make my way back, my legs finally awake and the fresh breeze beating its way into my lungs. What a gift a short moment's peace can be, a quiet communion with wildflowers and Sunday morning birdsong. What a gift the slight reprieve of ignorance.

During a break in the rain, we make our way down winding roads to the orchards, spend a timeless hour weaving through blackberry brambles and staining our fingers with just-ripened jewels. The children's baskets never fill up, but their bellies do. I leave him voice messages in the quiet maze, and wonder if the truth isn't more that I leave them for myself. Remember this. You think perhaps the time has come to stop annexing your fantasies to others' lives. Following others' streams grows old, as you do.

You think perhaps the time has come to sow your own seeds, build the brambles of your own dreams. You think perhaps you are your own person, and since no one else can give it, you owe yourself the life that is yours.