Terminal

The airport is brand new, shiny like a penny with big windows and high ceilings. Everything changes, grows, moves with the generations. You know the mountains outside the glass like the skin on your lovers neck but these gates are unknown. A mosquito gets trapped near your seat and you wonder what it’s like to emigrate against your will. My bag is full of bubble wrapped heirlooms, 200 years of building lives. On the back porch last night I sat staring at the stars and thought 200 years is nothing to them and I wondered if that was sad or a relief. Edward abbey sits in the south Utah desert and eons go by under his fingertips, perhaps there are others like you out there. 

I was always slow, about all of it. But I think perhaps I wasn’t 

always

wrong. 

Suite 102

Thursday afternoons in another desert valley,
how time moves differently
in the country
in old age, how
We count our days but not so much our hourly rates
here
I stared at the mountainside for an hour and forgot a millennium,
The mountain scoffs at your wrist watch,  
Rolls its eyes at your deadlined ulcers, it
has lived here longer than your people knew their name, will
erupt and erode long after your bones have crumbled in the
desert sand,
We
sat across from a surgeon who said all will be well
In the end it’s just
We’re not at the end yet so
I need you to put your watch away a little longer
and let the mountain crumble
Because it will

But all things survive
by falling.

In Bloom

The lilacs tumble and grow in every garden, the desert valley awash with sweet scents. On the field outside my window, the season's new calves stumble around in the cold morning. It will be hot soon enough, May in the mountains feels like a deep breath of air, a calm before the storm. He sends pictures from the south and we compare skies: so wide out here, so tinged with the humanity that lies beneath hem. In New York, the swelter has begun. 

I sat under the full moon last night, speaking into the stars and wondering that I had so little for which to ask. My mother paces around the questions that surround her, speaking with her chickens and forgetting the routine for planting her sprouts. Life is long and short all at once, you cannot grasp it as it trickles through your fingers, I grew up in the woods very far from here and I don't know how I made it all make sense. My father tells stories of our ancestors, how they, too, traveled to the edges of their universe, how they, too, made ends meet only as a means to afford their creative endeavors how they, too, burned for something they could never reach but couldn't help trying. 

In the early mornings I sit on the cold stone on the back porch, focus on the things I can count: breaths of lilac, turns of the hawk across the field, mountain peaks with snow still on them. Ten years from now this valley will be unrecogizable. 

Ten years from now, will not you, too?

De:Part

The old routines are rusty, lie unused in unopened moving boxes at the back of the closet, ask themselves of future purpose. I stress clean the apartment looking for them, scrubbing tiles and arranging piles of paper, while the clock spins itself into a tissy. I have forgotten how to do this. Come morning, there is a bag by the door but I don't know what is inside it. Come morning, there is a ticket with my name on it, there is a flight ready to carry me across the country, you know the weave of this terminal like a dear friend but approach it instead like an old lover where you've forgotten why you loved them. 

I have forgotten why I loved you. 

The year has been cruel, and long, and lonely. But it has not been a year without joy. Has not been a year without magic. I found a tails-up penny at the security checkpoint and turned it up for someone who might need the luck, but did I not find a heads-up penny in a seat at the gate, left by someone who thought I might the luck myself? The Universe winks at us even when we forget to request it. 

The Universe remembers
for you.

Depart

I say, it isn’t lack of want, it’s lack of can, and he sinks into the corners, retreats with icy fingertips while you try to negotiate a trip after so many months without. There should be joy in travel but this time you feel mostly weight. His silence is deafening, speaks volumes. You clean the kitchen before you go, pour baking soda down the drain. The temperatures are going to hit swelter while you’re away. You water the plants. 

Men fail us in all their shortcomings, their unwillingness to step up when the season calls for it, but we carry on, meeting more of them and turning them over in our palms. Will this be the one polished gem I retain in an ocean of sea glass? 

My backpack is light. This journey has seen us before. Everything is different. 

This is the only constant. 

in the Sky

A tree grows on the windowsill across the street, impossible on a narrow ledge, stretching green paintbrushes toward the sky. Grow where you are planted, literally. We drove north in the early morning, unfamiliar fingertips hugging the curves of the parkway, curves of the nape of your neck, unfamiliar in this neck of the woods, would you like to know what it all looks like in the morning, in the fall, in the future? 

I came home drunk last night, weaving a rickety bicycle down sleeping St. Mark's and discovering an armchair on the curb, dragging it up four flights of stairs and trying not to wake the neighbors. They say New York took a beating, but I don't know. I have long conversations with strangers in the street, I find little winks from the city in unknown corners, in the morning I wake to birdsong and the super's brother wants to marry me, it's not New York if you didn't fight for it in one way or another. A woman rear ends my car while we are both looking for parking. My cheeks are flushed with sunshine. 

The time has come to make good on our promises. 

What will you let bleed out,
what will your heart let be
known?

Vernon Jackson

By the time you get to the subway stop, the red tape swerves around the bannister. You will not be getting back to the island. Trip across Queens streets in silence, count minutes till alarm clocks and demands on your awareness. I only ever wanted to be free. 

We sit at the other edge of the river, watch deep summer sun set behind Manhattan, I know this view from another life, the sting is only dull now, I turn it over in curiosity. Nothing bad doesn’t also bring something good with it, we say in my mother tongue, my native language I am a hundred poems in one, how much should we afford each other our shortcomings. I reach another subway stop, find another connection, feel the pressure of a midtown tunnel and long to reach Manhattan soil. 

It was all built on garbage but at least it is ours. 

Change trains in midtown, in the back of your mind something feels familiar. Doesn't the same go for anything these days, like you know you’ve gone through these motions before, know you’ve built smiles and exasperated hearts, know you’ve seen the New York night undulate underneath trembling fingertips, but it’s been so long and you don’t know if you trust it anymore.  

New York, my darling how we longed for you, how we ached and waited and burned when there was nothing else to do but fear, how we stuck it out. My head races in poetry on quiet Long Island city streets, it cannot be helped, I no longer want to help it. There was a time I thought the answers lay in watching that sunset with another pair of eyes seeing the same but I know now, New York, the other pair of eyes is just my own, mirrored, is just the magic of coming back full circle for round two. I told you I’d risk these streets to memories, and the time has come to make good on my promises. 

I empty my coffers for you, New York. 

It isn’t much, but oh, what it aspires to 

Sparrow

There's a mechanism somewhere deep in my genetic code, some circuit break of the northern ways and once the sunlight hits it, it effectively cuts the rest of my functions. All I can do is stare into sunlight, is stop in the middle of the street and wonder why I ever wanted to do anything but bask, but smile, but lift every other body toward the sun and say see, here, you live. It's so many long nights of barely seeing the horizon that when all you have is open sky it gets a little disorienting. She says Come out early and you don’t say no. 

It is May now. I no longer say no. 

See. Here. I live. 

Not Even Once

Sunrise in the corner window, my mind must be wide open because the dreams rushed through me like a streetsweeper, I wake clean. The world is everything all at once, did you notice? I spent hours in the window last night, beating typewriter ribbon against white sheets of paper until they painted entire lifetimes against the sunset. I know there is other work to be done, I know there is capitalism to uphold and these leaning floors do not pay for themselves, but oh, 

I believe we can feed our bodies poetry
and come out sated,
come out full.

and the History Books Forgot About Us

A whole day stares at you, gaping maw, ready to swallow you whole but in pieces of time, a slow slither down a long gullet. The to-do list sheens with ambition, with manageable morsels of productivity and pats on the proverbial back of living up to the expectations of society. Bukowski sits in the corner behind you and just laughs.

I take a long run along the river, past the bullet marks still warm in the concrete, sun warming my skin like we hadn't loved in years. We haven't loved in years. We haven't touched since this skin looked different, since the light behind my eyes looked different, what are you saying this light has always been dimmed by its own idea of missed opportunities. He says when can I see you again and you book a ticket to the other side of the country. When it rains, it pours, and this year has tears in droves. 

I'm so tired of crying, my dear, are you not?

Better then to uphold your deal with the devil;
Write like your mind is on fire,
like you haven't a heart to set aflame.

Otra Vez

Did they say it's running on the R? he says across rumbling subway trains and two sets of face masks. The train takes strange twists and turns in the late night; in the back of your mind something says you used to have this knowledge ingrained between your shoulder blades. 

The stranger and I chat through half of midtown, New York of the old ways returning, fist bumps at the end of the line because vestiges of humanity remain in us against all odds. I ride a bike east from Astor Place, late Tuesday night quiet on St Marks and two kids spinning the Cube, like kids have for generations. I am going to make it through this year if it kills me, rings in your head and something about the tingle on your lips says you already have. 

You wake early with the dawn, sunlight streaming in through still unfamiliar windows. The birds on the fire escape pay you no mind, chattering their morning gossip across Alphabet City. There's a cool breeze in the air, gentle May this year like it knows we are bruised. He writes good morning on your eyelids, and you think maybe Hemingway was right. When the spring comes, there is no problem except

where to be happiest.

News

The roles quickly line up, as expected. Here are the stoics, here the soft hearts. All armed with whatever knowledge we think will help. I went for a run along the river, you know how it clears my veins, slow methodic steps according to known routes. Underneath the Manhattan bridge I ran through a group of kids. One mississippi. Two mississippi. A shot rings out behind me. Is this what gunshots sound like? I have time to think before the teenagers swarm behind me to escape. Another shot. I cut across the basketball courts, try to see if anyone is following. The kids disperse. Another shot, a young man with a gun silhouetted against the East River. I suppose I should cross the street, floats past my temples as the voice in my headphones says I'm halfway there with an encouraging tone. I run back, at the edge of a gunfight, skirting the edge of something from which you cannot come back. Well it's been a day, I say later when she asks, but I leave it at that. Life is so brief, so impossibly, painfully brief. Let's not have it be over yet. 

I put one foot in front of the other, cover the miles. 

The only way out is through.

Blues.

Monday mornings arrive like unwelcome ailments, sneaking up your poorly sleeping body and announcing themselves into your half-conscious mind. You know it is a day of news, you know it's a day of cold temperatures and putting your shoulder to the wheel, you know it is all kinds of things while your brain muddles about in a hung over disappointment. You know there was a time when you felt joy, and curiosity, and excitement, when you wanted nothing more than to taste what the day had in store and waited impatiently for the next kiss, but that seems like a long time ago now. New York was so young then. 

Perhaps, so were you.

You drag your enormous mug of coffee to the desk. Take a moment, as you do every day, to look around the room and let gratitude overwhelm you. Home is something you work for, but when it comes, it seems the easiest thing in the world. 

Perhaps, so is love.

L Train

The air underneath the great metropolis is warm, stale, you had forgotten how the summer subways creep under your skin. Your mask your lips, sticky with color, sticky with anticipation. She says good for you with fear in her voice and you want to explain that you do this because you have to. Any semblance of want has long since escaped your vocabulary. A pandemic gives, but a pending mostly takes away. 

They call from below your window and stare up with expectant faces: the joy of neighbors. You know, I stayed in the neighborhood and still somehow it looks entirely different from this side of the numbered avenues. Do you know when I was young, I once dreamed to live in the place they called Alphabet City, even though it was said you shouldn’t venture there at night. In the windowed nook off Avenue B, I sleep better than I have in years. 

It’s hard to know what to do when your dreams come true. 

But you do it anyway. 

Briefs

Spring rushes in, like a fool, sweeps you off your feet and whisks you off into the newly sprouted foliage outside your window. How could you ever have doubted this view? How could you ever have wondered if Second avenue was as good as it got? I don't write, forgive me, I am busy again with life. This apartment leans, every part of the old wood floor angles toward the door, I am constantly encouraged to leave. 

I am constantly happy to come home.

or are you unforgiven too

Everything tastes better in spring, the air, the sleep, the music pounding its way into your stirring cells. The way he says your name, unassuming, like we didn't just make it through 14 months of ice floes. You try to explain what lilacs mean to someone from the north, the last day of school and three months of unending daylight ahead, that melancholy that grips you on early morning walks home from late night parties and everything rests but nothing sleeps. If you've never known the absolute death of a long winter, how can you know the exquisite torture of spring, but are we not all coming out of the same darkness? The governor says rates are plummeting, says we are on track to reopen, says you're doing great. You see the seats along the bar and think you have never loved anything more than this city, how could anyone ever compete. I wake to birdsong, now, did you hear? I am fearless and invincible, I only forgot for a moment. Crumpled post-its on my pristine walls say at the top of the list there's you, and there's a check mark next to it, can you imagine having your dreams come true? 

It seems impossible
only
until it doesn't.

What news

May bursts into your eardrums like fireworks, washes the dark corners of your winter realms and covers your every windowsill with the scent of lilacs. There's a certain feel of the wind against your cheeks as you fly down the Williamsburg bridge toward Manhattan, the jumble of its skyline spreading out before you and below the river unruffled, and that feeling sits in your every step now, your every word. I'm sorry I haven't written, for a moment I was busy being alive. 

We spend the weekend discovering each other's stories, whispering secrets in parking garages and sharing exasperations over margaritas: life returns, and with it, so do we. Sixth street is a cacophony of pent-up hope, I cannot be angry even as the glee seeps in through my window and wakes me. We close the door to the old apartment for the last time, and suddenly six years are bookended without a drop of blood. I drop her at their new home, all skyscrapers and Working Girl soundtracks, make my way back to the FDR and fly along the east side in a flood of sunshine. I go home.

There was so much sorrow this year, so much impossible tragedy and devastating quicksand. But when the light returns, and trust me my darling, it is returning, those of us who remain will step blinking into the day, will bookend that which has been and embrace again the things that make us human: joy, and an unquenchable thirst for hope. 

May is here now, my darling, we are here. It's been a long cold lonely winter. 

But it is over.