Orphaned

The country road is still in the late afternoon, misty skies and droplets of rain hanging light in the air, everything smells of warm mulch, of summer. It's warmer than my morning in the attic hinted. My breathing is heavy, my body tired from disuse, he writes to say push your fingers into the soil, and I know just what he means. Connect with something organic, remember what is real. 

I'm dragging myself out of the hole, painstakingly inching my way out from six feet under, trying to lean on every shaking step like a trust fall, trying to believe the sun when it rises. Perhaps life is just one long series of getting back up again after you've been knocked down. You can't say if that's exhausting or encouraging. 

Illness rages in your spine. It has made a home here, is determined to stay. 

But I saw flowers in bloom at the side of the road today, saw branches bursting with life and itching to get out, my lungs struggled but they kept breathing, deep big breaths of all that still remains in the world and what choice do I have but to join them? 

What choice do I have but to burst, too?

the Boy in the Gap

Wake before dawn, just in time to watch a blood orange sun rise over the Hudson River, watch its tangerine drips through the barren trees. The branches are getting knotty, they look like your glasses are getting old and you need a stronger prescription, like the trees are all out of focus. Soon, soon the world outside this window will burst into life, soon my lungs will remember how to breathe, I will remember  how to wake, I have wrestled with the angel and I am stained with light. Downstairs, the children wake, the morning rises, we are a year into the end of the world but we
live.

Gale

Everything is meteorology, is counting degrees and gauging humidity, learning new words for weather related phenomena, I don't know why but this is the healing that picked me, like I'm counting flicks of the light switch, like I'm soothing myself with obession. The March sun is bright outside the window but the river wind is Arctic, it races down from the Catskill Mountains and straight through the old Victorian home. I push the work ahead of me and dive into the safe retreat of my writing, perhaps that was the solution all along: make everything else around you worse and you'll have nowhere left to go but the words. Tomorrow they say it will be warm. Your to-do list grows. 

In your mind, only fantasy is sprouting.

Breathe

The stairs creak as you make your way up and down, countless times in a day because you are used to fitting everything you own in so few square feet that your brain never has to remember to bring the useful bits along all at once. 

Last night, I stood in the large country kitchen, feeding the sourdough starter and finding ease in the repetitive motion of dishes, of putting a day to rest. The breath comes easy then, the lungs fill and expel in rhythm, haunted by no metropolitan pace, no airs. In the morning, I lie in the dead stillness of a sleeping village, reading old novels left behind by generations of having enough space to not clear them out. There is a gift here somewhere, you are desperate to find it, but gifts do not acquiesce to your desperation. 

The Universe does not give a shit. 

One summer I broke every bone in my heart and ran away to the sea for comfort, I've sat under so many desert skies counting shooting stars, I have asked for gifts in every corner of this planet, but the truth is only one day of each year is your birthday and every other day you still have to keep living, even without the fanfare. Believe the Pearl will be handed to you. 

But keep walking the line or you'll miss it.

Escape

Rainy days in the country, I sleep like I'm locked in a coffin but too tired to interpret the reference. Your unconscious will speak and speak for days if you let it, best perhaps to ignore it for a bit. Everything feels far away, the urgency, the immediacy, nothing really matters in a country town that's sleeping, not even your bank account bothers to yell at you. 

Whoever said you can't run away from your problems maybe didn't run far enough. 

You wonder how much time you bought with the miles.

Upstates

The sun sets late behind the shed; you watch it from the porch over a glass of wine and everything is just as sweet and quiet as you could have asked for. It’s a wonder what a few hundred miles can do. The lake was frozen over, still, but the lawns are full of daffodils and the sun is mild in the sky, perhaps there is hope for us yet. 

I drag myself out of the mud, every year the same dance of disbelief, how can I go through a whole life without learning what lies in my memories. Spring returns, the breath in your lung reappears, perhaps there is a life left to life after all and this year it might just be found at the end of this highway. 

The face staring back at you in the mirror looks different, not like you thought you knew it, but it is still there. A full year of disaster has passed, and it is still there. 

You are determined to make that count for something. 

Call It

The days rise in a fog now, in cruel swerves of storms and frost, you try desperately to keep your chin up, your feet down, go through the motions of putting breath in your lung. There's an other side to this, you know there has to be, there always has been before. Try to count your fingers, your toes, the stars and wait till you reach it.

Be quite determined to reach it. 

They reach out in distant voices, tentative at first, then calm and determined, gauging the flight of your eyes, the cracks in your composure, line up defense and offense around your excuses, make a plan to check back in. You melt at their comfort, at being seen for all your madness. 

Zip yourself back up and go for a run. 

Today I saw the first buds on the trees along the river, not quite there, but almost. I thought If they can make it through a hundred days of dreary death, and still come out brand new, then surely I can hold my breath and find some life here too. 

I don't quite believe it yet, of course
but maybe I don't have to believe
for it to still be true.

Returns

The regular bar is quiet on a Monday afternoon, before it's socially acceptable to drink, before it's socially acceptable to fall apart, but you've tried to keep it together long enough, you've washed your hands a million times. A shot grows in your arm, a spring grows in the window, he takes the check from your outstretched hand and you begin to believe these floors will be yours, begin to believe there are gems in the quicksand, even if you have yet to imagine you could deserve them. 

I step inside, into the empty space, write down my name, how many in my party (what a foul pun, I think), record temperature, wash my hands. Take the table in the windowat least, she says, and I realize my old table in the corner is gone. I've just gotten used to it, she says, pouring the order she knows you're about to utter, forget it was ever any other way. You remember asking for just one good thing in the year that passed and begin to wonder if maybe this wasn't it. A living room at the other end of the block. The bartender lights incense. The playlist has changed. Darker, but maybe more earnest. 

Perhaps the same can be said for all of us. I spend half my time battling demons now, but in the short spaces between, am I not gifted reprieve of the most gentle kind, am I not gifted caresses the kind only New York offers? A slight magic, a nod of recognition, the space of singing along quietly in a bar that feels like home, one day I wrote a few words that felt right and hot damn if I didn't live off those words an entire lifetime, don't

tell me that drug won't
see us through.

Aequus

Every morning now is longer than the last, a triumph of the hemisphere. I rise just before dawn, sit in the dim silence and try to see what words appear in the margins of my consciousness. 

Not many, it turns out. 

Mondays are always strange in their currents, the push and pull of clean slates and chasing storm clouds, there's a weight in my gut where my hope used to be, I no longer know how to keep the demons at bay. The ends aren't meeting where they demand to, and I don't know how to make them. 

Rifle through written words, surely the secret must be written here somewhere, if only you know what you are looking for, if only you can decode the cipher. Look at your own streams, see if you can make out the pattern. The only lifeline that ever held was words, you know this but cannot remember how, turn them over in your hands, try to see if they are made of money. 

Try to see if you can eat your words. 

Replace the weight in your gut
with surrender.

I Was Made to Believe

The promenade is a tidal wave of people unearthed from their hiding spaces, New York City explodes into life. I am reminded of the illnesses that once ran rampant through my body, which I thought I had eradicated. But you are never free of that which tangles itself into your bloodstream. It's almost that time of year again, the reminder of a day when you leapt from open windows and pulled the rug from under yourself, I do not forget it. It's been so many years now, it's been a lifetime, it's hard to remember even who I was then.

But not hard enough. 

Seems I'm spending this lifetime trying to outrun what is always one step ahead.

Into the Woods

There comes a point when you have written
all
the same words a hundred times over, a thousand times, eleven years of
repeating yourself and getting nowhere, how is
that
for ingenuinity
38 years of falling back into that same sludge and still
head full of foolish ideas
that you could possibly ever escape.

Can you not even withstand a little
pandemic?
Your fortitude is, disappointing,
to say the least.

Spring is springing
in that way it does
in that way it has done after
every dark winter you've ever seen
There is
always a moment just before daybreak

When you are quite convinced
it will never come at all.

one more time for the people in the back

(I am going to make it
through this year
If it kills me)

and Grace Will

Wake from intricate dreams, long narratives woven through the mundane into wonder, there's no sense to be made. Mornings are dark again now, for a brief moment you fear winter is here, that January still has its withering hold on you but the forecast says mild temperatures and by the time you have finished your coffee the sky is light, the fear has passed. 

I'm writing a new story. By which I mean the pages are blank; the actual tale rests in my spine, moves in and out of my body with every breath. It's strange to make concrete that which haunts you in silence. Like picking a cancer out of your flesh and turning it over in your hands, examining it out of curiosity and thinking it's much smaller than I imagined. This is a blessing. 

All writing is a blessing, don't forget. 

Not everything in life is there to pay the rent.

(Home)

If it all looks good,
I'll send over the official version so you can sign
later today.

I put my digital digits on pages upon pages, head swimming and everything surreal. Fifteen years in this city and suddenly a home appears? Fifteen years in this city and I was home the minute I first landed at JFK, don't you come at me with regulation. 

A new tenant moves in across the street, buildings filling up again like spring floods returning life to Manhattan. Did you land safely? Did you take that first deep breath on a New York street and remember just how the city realigns your bones, how it sits in your chest, silent while you are elsewhere, but profound and unmovable all the while? Did you smile, despite yourself, because not even you can be cool against the sweet smile of the city?

The road is long
and winding. 

That doesn't mean it doesn't lead
where we're going.

If I'm Honest

Rumor says you're coming home. Says you went looking for answers and found them in the curve of the tide, and now you are bringing them back. I pace anxiously, as though nearness carried more weight than distance, as though any of my questions could be answered, too. Have I not been busy trying to make clear that which is muddled? Have I perhaps reached the same conclusions as you? Rumor says tonight we may get snow. 

We are all disillusioned by the promise of our lives, the joys we expected, the chance to change a world or maybe just spend our time with something that moved us. Middle age reaches us in shades of meh, was this the struggle of every generation, or the fault ours for dreaming different to begin with? She says think of your earliest memories and all I can remember is sorrow. 

Surely the wind whispered differently to you on your journey? Surely you return with a golden grain of Truth in your fist? No wonder my nerves hum at the knowledge of your return. 

They're ready to tear those treasures from your hands.

Saving Daylight

It arrives again. An anniversary and a season, all at once, you are a jumble of gratitude and eerie nostalgia. This was the last day I rode the subway. This was the last time I saw you. This was our last drink in a bar. We didn't know. We didn't know.

But the crocuses still spring forth from the earth, the snowdrops and daffodils and blissful ignorance bathe in sunlight, this morning I ran across the Williamsburg Bridge and did you know there was such a thing as joy, because I think I had forgotten. I didn't know. 

Everything is still questions, but they look smaller now, lighter, I remember how to make my fist into an open hand, remember how to gently hold that which whimpers in my chest. Everything is still unanswered but I am starting to formulate my response, I believe this pen can carry you across the Great Divide, the greatest gift we can be given is hope. 

I am still a run-on sentence but don't you see, that is exactly the thing. I was quiet, and still, 

and now I am no more. 

365

We sit at a table in the window, no heater and Friday night in New York like the entire year that passed never happened. I biked straight through a film shoot and no one batted an eye. Today I rode the subway, a reflex along my spine remembering what the right number of stops feels like, the currents of people and sways of tunnels. Maybe some things return. 

You sit in stillness for just a moment, knowing everything that is about to come will come. Storms do not dissipate on your doorstep, they blow right through. You were always hesitant to step across thresholds. 

But you always did,
when you were ready.

Apartment 4

The landlord loves your application, he writes. Let me get you the paperwork.

For years I walked past the corner building, with the popular deli at the bottom, with the community garden and triple terraces, with just enough windows that you could look inside and fantasize about what it would be like to get what you always dreamed of. For years, I took a deep breath and whispered to myself, only to myself, one day. I wrote post-it notes in secret but spoke out loud about being pragmatic, about being reasonable. 

In my heart I haven't been reasonable for years, who are we kidding. 

When the apartment came on the market, I knew.
When the apartment remained on the market, I knew.
When everything was said and done I doubted a hundred doubts in my heart,
it didn't know how to be reasonable. 

I wrote the landlord a love letter, I am not ashamed to say it. Spoke of spring blooms in gardens built by those who came before. Spoke of meandering words that found their place in the nook of a city made of Alphabets. Spoke of twilight runs along rivers and how the soul of this town pulsates from the park around the corner. I spoke dreams into truths, and it's hard not fall in love with truths made of dreams. 

The crocuses are coming out of the earth now, the snowdrops and daffodils, this morning I biked across the Williamsburg Bridge like I was soaring into Manhattan on sunshine. 

Winter is dead. 

Life is everything that comes after.

Guarantee

Your alarms ring early now, you steal time the only place it exists, you steal time from yourself and everything is a haze as your eyes travel across the words of others. After the first cup of coffee, you think about time, wonder what it means in the grand scheme of things: one day we will all die, and then what will we think of the choices we made?

To be fair,  you thought you'd be dead years ago, so maybe everything now is just buttercream frosting. 

I look at old words, read the stories I've been weaving into my own narrative for years. There's a treasure trove of life there. How insignificant it can look in your hands, and still be a miracle in retrospect. It reminds you everything looks different in sunlight. Soon the four-leaf clovers will make their way out of the earth again, soon the cherry blossoms will pop unabashedly and the river will sparkle, America will stretch out its imperfect expanse and beckon you to touch it, soon the stories will write themselves at your fingertips again. 

The paperwork seems less daunting when you know you'll soon have magic within reach. 

Don't waste your time looking for purpose
when you know it's already nestled in your spine.

Rise

I walk past the house obsessively now, it's been so long since I wanted anything at all that it seems the longing is just as much a gift in itself. Some days I think it easier not to want anything at all, because then how could you be disappointed? I close my eyes and take three deep breaths, the woman in my headphones tells me to surrender, I wonder if she knows how tightly I hold my fears to my chest, one doesn't simply surrender what is wound around the heartstrings, does she not know the winter has been long and cold and devastating? 

I wrote a bit of poetry on a post-it one day, and it grew and grew in my hands until I swear I could see the whole Universe in verse, did you know it is a gift to have song in your heart? I falter so often and forget, it's only that fear tied too tight in my chest, it forgets sometimes
what it thinks it is
protecting.

Two Shot

It's the last frigid Saturday of winter, you determine. This will be the last of it. You shiver a few blocks east, pacing again around a hardwood floor that you have decided will be yours. I haven't told you yet but I'm gonna be with you. Maybe this is what I was talking about. It's possible I got my loves mixed up. The Universe makes sure to put me where I need to be, even when I attempt winding roads to get there. 

Later, at a hospital in the Bronx, I walk through the second door to a new world, or an old one perhaps, even if it's a little rough around the edges now. A year we've lost to insanity and I do not recognize us anymore. There is no going back to who we were before. There is no reaching back into the innocent past. There is only dusting off these ashes and building something new.

Spring arrives, health arrives, the wisdom that only comes with walking through fire is weaving its tale around our poor, huddled masses. We are coming out the other side. 

Rough around the edges, yes.
But alive.

That win is fragile. 

I'm still going to take it.

Park

Early morning dances in the east village: one enthusiastic street sweeper, a handful of seasoned unruffled feathers, a sprinkling of young project managers, direction the choreography. I settle into a spot down the block, closer to my own stoop than maybe ever before, think what a strange journey this life and marvel at almost 15 years in this town. Do you know I grew up without a home? Do you know I read books about rootlessness and think I remember that, no longer in pain or fear, just in curious observation. My accent changes with the latitudes, my smile alters with the crook in your eyebrow. Adapting is all I know how to do. The apartment is still available, he writes, and I clear my schedule to see it again. You do not keep home waiting. You do not waste another moment. 

Do you know, when I first met you, I thought the same thing. 

 He says drinks at seven? and it no longer hurts me to say yes. 

The shifts are minute
only until
they are monumental.

Knees Scuffed

A morning arrives in words. Half asleep, I read tales of strangers. Later, after the coffee has sunk in, I shift and scrub my own to make them just a little better than before. Let my eyes brush over old poems of summers ago, the summer when you left me, do you remember? It's some of my best work, so the heartache was not a waste. 

It's a cruel truth to write better in agony, but it is crueler still to not write at all, I will take every morsel of prose I am offered. 

My father writes from across the country and says it's too late to tell his story, because who would listen now? His friends die around him, how finite a life without faith in the ridiulous, how much more urgent to write all your words before it is too late. 

Write all your words before it is too late. 

There's an answer on those pages, somewhere in your layers of ink lie answers and you will not rest until you've found them. The sunlight returns now. 

It's easier to see clearly again.

Chill

Rise early again, the mornings are light now but the head groggy, uncertain of its night time convictions. Why was I doing this again? Sit in front of a blank page as dawn evaporates into Arctic winds. A bullet point list outlines a story, but falls flat. You think, I do not make the rules. The story tells itself to me, that is how it always has been. I do not make the rules. 

An entire new person grows in front of me, a person who was not there before but who now suddenly has a whole life behind her. Sets construct themselves and lines of dialogue are rehearsed, the road unravels before our poor hapless players, there's no turning back now. 

Sunlight arrives, a new work day arrives, deadlines wave in the margins, I close the word processor and direct my attentions elsewhere. But it has been started now. That place lives now, when it did not before. I feel the itch grow in my spine, the constant pull to come back, come back and stay. Little embers of hope. 

I count the pennies under my mattress, tally up the beads on the abacus: buy myself a few more moments on the page. Watch the ink curlicue around the margins, feel the soft beating of magic. We survived February. 

Now we get to live.

March. On.

The typewriter remains in crumbles, but the month is new. I try to be the latter myself, instead of the former, despite the face in the mirror. The rainy morning gives way to gale warnings as I make my way down the river promenade, only barely keeping the feet from getting knocked out from under me. At the base of the footbridge back to the grid, the first daffodils are making their way out of the earth. 

I woke early this morning to put some new words on a blank page. It's a cruel gamble, an old drug habit where a little hit no longer does the trick and you're no longer sure the right dosage. But every now and then, the ink hits a vein, every now and then you strike that perfect high, and words pour out of you like time is nonexistent. 

And you've been around long enough now, been an addict for long enough now, to know that the possibility of that hit will keep you coming back to the blank page
for the rest of your days. 

The month is new. That'll do, for now.