of the Sea

I wake unceremoniously from deep sleep, deepest sleep I rationalize my existence before even opening my eyes, everything is confused. He reads poetry and you love a good song in your ear, want to put that lilting accent on repeat and close your eyes, from my window I can see a building I once knew only from guide books, what a strange miracle this town is. You don't know how to tell him. 

They say we can take our masks off now, say we can travel to Europe if we want to. I have forgotten what my lips look like, have forgotten about smiles from strangers, have forgotten how we are in our bodies and of our bodies because for a full year we have shielded ourselves from our bodies. Will you remember, looking back, how dark and unending the winter full of loneliness? Will you remember how, at last, you thougth you would not make it out alive?

Of course not. 

The blessing of a life is that we are allowed to forget. That we can rediscover our smiles, and believe they weren't
hard won.

Screen

I wake early, again, the room is all windows and the radiator purrs against April chills, I sweat. There is poetry in the air today, did you hear? The poets always take themselves too seriously, always take each other too seriously always take
the world
too seriously. 

The dating apps say they're looking for someone who
doesn't take themselves too seriously. 

He doesn't write you any more, doesn't call, doesn't figure in your dreams, you wonder who cut the last cord. One day your parents picked you up for the last time, but it's just a platitude. My apartment fills with heirlooms, delicate trinkets, moments in time my ancestors touched. The sign my father stole from a train bathroom door in the 60s. The ukulele my grandfather took to war. The trunk that brought my elders out of the woods up north, some time in the late 18th century. My mother's vinyl suitcase. My grandmother is everywhere, because she was the storyteller. Everything she touched became a thing that grounded me, omnia mea mecum porto, this apartment is all birdsong now. Your mother calls to say they need her back for more tests. 

My mother calls to say they need her back for more tests. 

I'd say you can't make poetry out of that
but the truth is I don't want
to.

Welcome

A full moon moves across the firmament, lights up the little bedroom across from the community garden. Was the sky always this wide, and I just didn't know it? I unpack box after box, wonder where things should go, wonder how to set up a life. Return to the old apartment, how it feels foreign, though it is so familiar. You do not live there anymore. He says let's be kind to our hearts and you soften your tensed muscles. On the fire escape, a pair of mourning doves have made a nest in my flower pot. It's theirs now. 

I let go of that which was, now, do you hear me Universe? I am cleansed and twisted and thrown into the new, I am ready. May is upon us and in May we run. 

In May I am ready to believe impossible stretch
of the sky.

Green Door Left of the Deli

Tompkins Square Park is full on a sunny Saturday, cherry blossoms spilling out over the sidewalks and benches crowding like the past year didn't happen at all. We eat pizza and drink beer, stretching out legs exhausted by the morning. A whole life packed up, brought down two flights and brought up three. I live here now, you see yourself write, but the words don't mean anything yet. The helicopters are louder here, the sky so wide and present. The night too late for curtains, you lie in bed gazing out at it. I live here now. 

You do not know yet what any of this means. You placed this home in your heart a long time ago and now it is here, what strange miracle is that? 

The thing about miracles is,
Once you've seen one,

You start to believe they can happen everywhere. 

But Yes

I always run in May. It sweeps in with that cherry-blossomed scent, with winds from the sea and lungs full like a horizon, I am powerless against its honey, against its promises of freedom and this year, at last, I can seize it. I run the four floors up to the apartment made of windows, stare longingly at boxes and dream of unpacking them, dream of building them into a whole new life. In May you get to be whoever you want, what'll it be? Do you remember there was a time I wouldn't park the car without you by my side, do you remember there was a time I would not leave my apartment, do you remember there was a time I thought I woulnd't ever make it back to this town at all? 

No, we do not remember that now. We are clean slates now, bright eyes and hope sprouting in our chests, we are four flights of stairs that feel like flying because when you're running into the arms of someone you love you do not feel your muscles burn. There's a lightness in my chest it's been ages since I felt. Like I ached for flight and the runway rolled out in front of me, like for once my desire and the world aligned. 

Little darling
It's been a long cold lonely winter. 

But it's over now.
In May we don't even remember
the dark.

Wondrous

I sleep too little, but wake alert: April magic. He says let's make a map of the city and go see it, and you wonder which parts of the city it might be possible to see like they're new. You wonder which parts of yourself. 

In Minneapolis, a judge reads words off a paper, and they do not bring a life back, but they offer a sigh of relief. We breathe where he could not. There is cheering in the street, and a strange silence after. You go for another run along the river, cannot get enough of the air in your lungs. Think of your freedom and the great injustices that put you there. America, I chose you. My room begins to empty. I carry the plants gently to new windowsills. We live our little lives, within the enormity of what it is to be human, what a strange wedge. 

It is over.
It has only just begun.

6th and B

Spring arrives, at last, at last, you feel it in your bones and dare to lean against its shoulder, dare to take deep breaths like you intend to go on living. The magnolias turn to tidal waves against the grass, pink cherry blossoms crowd against each other to reach their idols, every park is littered with emerging humans, making their way out of a darkness unbelievable in the times Before we knew what a life could be. But those of us who made it out are here, now, it seems impossible. I fill the station wagon and we make our way east. It's not a lot of blocks but the distance is immeasurable. Fifteen years I've been walking these streets now, and still New York finds new ways to show up. 

Fifteen years, New York, and I still blush when you wink at me. 

She asks us all to name one thing to come out of this last year for which we can find gratitude. I think of all the months of fear, months of darkness and thinking that perhaps the demons would at last catch up and overtake me, of how tired we have been, irreparably exhausted. But in the end, New York, all that remained was the knowledge that I'm making it out alive, that every day I get knocked down I get back up again, that the chance to stay here will always keep me clawing my way back out of the storm grate. 

...but when they ask you how you are, you say fine, because there aren't words enough for how good they really are.

You failed at every
single
thing you ever hoped for
and dreamed of
except this
one
thing.

In the end, New York, all that remained was you.

As You Can

I’m packing my boxes now, at every turn weighing the items of my coffers against the lightness of a new space. What do hou want to bring? Who do you want to be in this new space? Choose carefully. 

I took down the shelf from above my door, all sheets and towels and one unassuming box, I didn’t think before I opened it and out feel all the memories I thought I had forgotten. That snowy view of the Christmas tree from above, that trip to the woods, that visit to an art gallery where the exhibit provides war plugs and I suddenly realized that was what you had been looking for. 

The key card to the hotel room where I thought it could be saved, only to later see that everything had already burned and I was quenching my thirst with the bitters of my own medicine. 

I stood paralyzed at the sight of the box, its unapologetic innards spilling out onto my pristine presentation of a life, glaring at me with its damaged goods. My damaged goods. Who do you want to be in this new space? 

You never could outrun yourself. 

Sine

My room begins to look a mess, half-packed suitcases and street-scavenged cardboard boxes jumbled about the toppled piles of paper. Did I have this many books always? He writes to say he moved your car, everyone does as much as they can. You are grateful. From the back of my closet I pull winter coats and vintage dresses, reminders that I was not always this husk of a pandemic being, was not always a toad. But now I eat flies and do not fit into these colorful fancies, these visions of what a New Yorker might be. I don't remember how to wear things that make me happy. Do not remember how to feel my body in the world. 

I pack them and close the suitcase. This is not the time to think of it. 

For so long, I imagined us coming out of this pandemic in an explosion, a celebration in the streets when the war was over. But now I see life will return in fits and starts, in scurries across open plazas, I see now that there are parts of our old selves that will never come back. 

This post doesn't have an ending. Nothing is neatly tied together yet.

But I'm Going to Be with You

The bike weaved through late afternoon traffic, due west, bright sunshine and saucer magnolias billowing out from brick walls and townhouse stoops. I rode to the end of the island, to that bric-a-brac collection of cobblestone and factory wall that is being white washed and moneyed by the day. At the end of the block, right before the landfill dips into the Hudson river, I knocked on a steel door, and when I turned around, my hand held the keys to a whole new world, if only literally. 

It was after sunset by the time I reached the apartment, the last waves of pink twilight at the end of the street, stars rising over Brooklyn. I turned the lights off, walked around the leaning wood floor, whispered introductions into the exposed brick wall. From the kichen window, between stacks of tenement buildings, a sliver of Tompkins Square Park appears; from the bedroom, a few tall spires from Brooklyn. At every turn, deep blue sky and budding trees, with every breath, a strange new voice, unknown and yet familiar. 

New York, honey, I have spent a lifetime looking for you.
You were always the world I was hoping to find.

Spring

The gingkos are sprouting on the Avenue, and I'm missing it. That short period of time after they've burst forth when they are mere miniature version of the splendid ancient aliens they are soon to be, it always seemed to me a little wink from the Universe. A little look what I can do, and I looked, and I looked. 

Sunshine returns to the east village, I sit nailed to a desk, oddly comfortable. love what you do and you'll never work a day in your life, they say and it isn't true. 

But love what you do and you'll learn to love work too. 

I have your keys here, if you want them, he writes. 

The gingkos beckon,
and everything beyond.

I Haven't Told You Yet

You have three minutes and sixteen seconds to write this story, you internal editor yells at you, feigning deadlines so that you might pick up the pace. I spent the weekend in moving boxes, wrapping up a life, unable to think about the one to come. We have a new project for you, do you have time?

I know I said life comes with the season. I also know I said I didn't believe it. But I spent the weekend in words and in action, I spent the week in sprouting work, but at the top of the list there's you, I first heard the song in a moving truck we couldn't stop because the engine wouldn't start again, what a fucking metaphor is that, you know?, and anyway I got where I was going then and eventually I got here too, so there's a strange justice about the Universe when it gives you long enough for perspective. I packed up my ancestors' travel chest from 1785 and can you imagine how far it's come from the woods of the North, how can you look at that journey and not call it a wonder? My grandmother kept dried flowers in it on a stairway landing for 60 years, what does utility mean? 

I went over the time limit. It was worth it.

I haven't told you yet
but I'm gonna be with you.

8th ave.

You tell him no and the silence in return reminds you that you are only a star as long as you serve people a purpose, as long as they have something to gain from your glow. It is a good reminder to shine mostly for yourself. I woke up this morning with a pile of moving boxes deposited in the living room, drunken jackpots picked up from the street. Ask and the city shall provide. 

I went to the typewriter repair shop and deposited all my collected coins into their hands to bring home the mintgreen machine whose absence has sat in my chest all this time. I smiled when I saw it, my fingers running gently over the cleaned keys and oiled parts like reconnecting with a lover. We sat later, at the cheap bar, running up the only tab the Village will let us afford anymore, bemoaning our devotion to the Word, to the poor pursuit of our literary visions, rolling our eyes at our own clichés.

But here's the thing, we said in chorus, we wouldn't have it any other way.

The stumble home through Washington Square Park, all cherry blossoms and heathen rituals, was lighter then, worth the worry, impossibly. We are still alive. That'll do. 

Organ

My kidneys are failing me, but I really was talking about the instrument. You wouldn't believe it if I told you. I moved the car so far I crossed a river without realizing, Brooklyn like pasture to concrete children. Damn I love this town. Its magnolias like innocent sages, forever an enigma, I walked past the new apartment again and thought Did I not will that into existence? and sometimes it's hard to process all the magic in the air, fighting for space with the pollen. People have returned to the avenues.

We live.

Make Believe

A dark cloud rolls by but quickly disappears, leaving nothing but blue skies and an itch in your spine. You start the day with lipstick, with feigning civility, you start the day with a strange hopefulness like secrets are unlocking before you even though you didn't know the secret word. 

The magnolias are in bloom along the river. The cherries quietly popping in Brooklyn. On East 6th street, an empty apartment bathes in sunlight. At a small repair shop in Chelse, a mint green typewriter waits to be picked up. 

It's coming. It's coming. It's coming.

Headlight

You leave the window open, bravely, brazenly. So far it is warm enough, but this morning the radiator hissed in the cold. The cherry blossoms are almost here. 

The strong scent of cigarette smoke wafts in, sounds from a nearby restaurant, some car's terrible music. Nothing keep them out, and you don't think you want them to stay on their side anyways. After a year of silence, perhaps we are ready to make a little noise. 

Another exposure flares up, the phone lines ring hot with who has seen whom and what does this mean, do we have to stay home now? I go for a run instead, allergens knocking me half conscious in my scrambles from the bottom of the rock. It is what it is. 

Perhaps that can be said about the entire year. 

And infinite words about what it is not.

Falls

You start out starry-eyed, believing yourself healed, you stare into magnolia blossoms and feel lighter, feel muscles that have not stretched in many dark months rev up their engines. 

But the tank is empty, your machine is all out of gas, at first encounter of an anthill, it stalls, begins to tumble backwards. You see the abyss again, how familiar, how you never wanted to recognize it to begin with and now you know its every crevice, every rough edge as you tumble toward the bottom. 

Along the way, there are spots of light, little flames burning as reminders that you are not but a husk. It is hard to grab them, when you forgot you had hands. They fade into darkness as I pass them. They will be there on the way up. 

It gets tiresome describing the exact same fall
a thousand times.

You wonder what the solution to that
might be.

or Take Me Anywhere

Saturday morning chaos over burned pancakes and missing shoes, there are appointments across the river and an ache splitting your head, did we order too many cocktails last night because the normalcy felt like a gift? It's too late to do anything about it now. 

The city beckons me with returns. Speaks of moves and forward momentum. Speaks of spring. A year ago how we were tethered to our fears, to our ideas of temporarily arrested momentum, that soon everything would resume again. Now every step forward is hard earned, is unearthed through digging with calloused hands. They sat waxing over last call expressing gratitudes for all the wonders they'd been afforded in the past year and you couldn't speak for all that you'd lost, all that you had not gained. 

But am I not here, too? Do I not live, still, and see the daffodils come forth from the earth? Do I not feel the sunlight on my face? My skin is scarred, yes, my spirit bruised. But I am here. 

Perhaps that is good enough.

Fooled

It starts as we're walking down the main street, deserted in Good Friday morning schedules: April snow. The flakes are tentative, like they hesitate to exist but sort of cannot help themselves. The air is cold, they dance without really sinking, like everything is suspended, even the world. The magnolia blooms by the library have shut tight again; the first cherry blossoms have bloomed in Brooklyn, but you are not yet ready to believe it. Jesus died for somebody's sins, but perhaps they were his alone. 

We all gotta deal with our own shit, as they say. 

Spring is slow this year, reluctant. Last year how it burst into our locked down cities, how it spread like wildfire across abandoned neighborhoods, how it declared its fuck you I won't do what you tell me into the concrete, into the bated breath of a world paralyzed by fear of invisible foes. Spring does not care about your trivial lives. You die for your own sins. 

Spring's only mission is to live.