A New World Order

Everything looks good, she says, smiling at your mother in bright blue scrubs, and suddenly a world of worries is wiped away. Around the country, those you love are grappling with the scrubs that do not smile, the apologetic scrubs, the we'll take it one day at a time and sometimes despite your best intentions you run out of days scrubs. They walk out of the room with their shoulders hunched, carrying your hopes like burdens.

I cannot always make sense of this world, mi amor, I will not begin to try. 

We'll take it one day at a time. 

I'll carry your burdens
like hope.

Post-It

(but no. 

if you're going to write poetry,
write poetry. 

(on that note;
write poetry.))

Unkind

A weekend disappears in wordless breaths, in avenues yet undiscovered under desert suns. Evenings are cool in the Intermountain West, forgiving, they wash you clean of your sins. At night, I stared at the sky looking for answers in the Milky Way but its wisdom was hiding under a cloud cover, perhaps that is an answer, too. Later, he sends poetry like a meal, like overripe allegory dripping between my fingers, and this avenue feels familiar. Do I walk it again, regardless? Do I tread these well worn paths, see if I can make them lead in new directions? What is it they say about doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. 

I have forgotten to expect outcomes at all. 

The early summer slips from our fingers, the long nights and cool waters. When can I go into the super market and buy what I need with my good looks? You can feel something brewing inside of you, feel words and phrases and dreams unravel, realign. Feel a space being made where the answers might fit. 

Make space for the notion that they won't look how you expected them to.

Midsummer Night's Eve

Lore says to put seven meadow flowers underneath your pillow to dream of your one true love, but it doesn't say what to do if you live in the desert. The pagans of old always had more rain than they could ask for. I change the bed sheets. 

Perhaps this is when the new year begins, this, when life sprouts and the mountains are set aflame. Perhaps it does us no good to make plans when our hearts are buried and resting under the snow. I see little tendrils of new green grow in my chest and think I have all the blossoms I need. Happy New Year, then. 

Make of it anything you can. 

Right

Time is different here, I tell him, after the sun has set behind the mountain and a swelling moon rises in the east. Not irrelevant, but like it moves according to different rules. I wake disoriented every morning at dawn, crawl out of deep dreams in which I have moved to the top of a hill, in which I have moved to a foreign land, in which my apartment is still always the size of a shoebox, some realities remain umovable. A dentist appointment approaches and my mouth is all pyschoanalytic interpretation, is all repressed feelings and unprocessed fears. But my body is browning with the season, my smile is adapting to a world uncovered, perhaps there is light at the end of this tunnel. Time moves according to different rules even when we think we bend it to our will, the point is it moves and we move with it. 

The point is this morning I woke up from strange dreams with a mouth full of words and when they say you'll know the love of your life when you see it
I don't think they meant this
but
I do.

Dawn

(When all your days are counted,
lie behind you in piles
according to joys, or changes, or however you choose
to organize the experience of your life;

What will you think?
What will you say?

If nothing really matters,
You get to choose what does.)

Choosy

Mondays arrive in the country, too, although they look different when the clocks tumble away with the weeds. I work through sunrise, watch the colors seep out of the land and turn to fire. The corporate world feels light years away. Let it burn. Were we not meant to sit with our bare feet planted in the earth, whispering poetry into the air, catching miracles on white sheets of paper until they sated us? Were we not meant for more than chasing paychecks while capitalist scarcity shoved itself down our throats? There's a fizzy gin drink with my name on it, there's a turn of phrase that recognizes the sound of my voice, how can I go on pretending I have better things to do with my time. 

The itch returns, Jack pulls up with his beat up jalopy, asks me - no, demands of me - to jump in, the road lies dusty ahead but possible, and damn if that isn't the best word I've heard all year. Tickets appear in the desert, strange roads appear in the summer solstice, I have been sitting still for a whole year and I think maybe
maybe

now we get up.

Par

Your father walks around the setting sun with a golf club, practicing putts for a game he now will never conquer. We have reached that age now where everything can happen quickly, he says, and wonders if it is too late to learn how to pay the bills. Your mother remembers her ignorance to the passing of those who bore her, and cries at all the things she never could tell them. You wonder what you will regret when they go, but it is always too heavy to do anything about it before it is too late. 

Is that what life is?

Yet when he asks you about enthusiasm, you find that it pours out of your open chest, when he asks you about futures you find that you see one. The shifts are minute until they are monumental.

You decide that if the sun will keep rising,
after everything it's been through,

so will you.

I Hear You Knocking

The alarm rings before dawn, all confusion and slow steps. Arrive at a hospital before the day has begun, tuck the nerves away, the desert heat doesn't reach the inside of carefully laid plans and in just a few hours this will all be over. We drive through the canyon in the late afternoon, and watch the boats in a half-dried reservoir pretend the holiday was just a sunny addition to their summer, not a comment on the injustices of a land. 

The life is short, though the days stretch on. The little sparks appear when you do not ask for them, the daggers, too. It is all we can do is hold on best we can, gather the joys and remember them through the rain. Summer is short, too short, though the days stretch on. But it is here. And so are you. 

Perhaps,
for now,
that will do.

Untitled

The desert burns, but does not swelter, does not leave you panting on the pavement, the desert burns just beyond where the hot air touches your skin. You are singed, but not swallowed. By sunset, the air softens, a mild heat radiating off slick rocks as the steady sound of sprinklers sing across the valley. It smells of youth and summer holidays, it smells of an innocence. Your surgery is scheduled for 6:45 a.m. they tell her across the line. You can bring two people. He speaks of rerouting returns past your doorstep, and you wonder if you remember how to feel any way about backpocket tickets anymore. This year is full of scar tissue, it's hard to feel the sweet caresses of joy when they are offered. 

You go to bed early, set the alarm. 

Wait for the desert to wake you.

Clueless

I stayed up too late, puttering about the little apartment as if packing it up for the winter. I knew I’d be tired, but it’s so hard to be sensible when the little spirit of life swims through you, drives you. I leaned into the flow, followed the current, watered the plants. This year leaves us irreparably changed, the courses of our spirits altered, but it leaves us. 

Perhaps that will do. 

The ride to the airport was seamless, sunny Thursday morning in New York and the skyline gleaming. I board the plane reluctantly, like a lover torn from bed too soon, I feel like I just got you back and it’s hard to let that go. The morning glory vine climbs up my fire escape, just like I had dreamed. 

I know times are tough, now, I know things aren’t turning out the way you had hoped. But that morning glory does not remember the year that’s been, does not ache and stumble from days it no longer remembers. It stretches into the sun and winds its way around the next height, sprouting its blossoms as it goes, even though they last only a day, even though the joy is brief.

Everything is not happy, but something is. 

Perhaps that will do. 

Sign In

On the upper upper west, the sun sets like a dream across the Hudson. New friends outline themselves against the twilight. Summer is kind, caressing your cheek with a moment of reprieve, knowing the storms to come. One day you left a job you'd had an entire life and you forget to let it feel like something. He sends you travel schedules and itineraries, trying to coordinate the miles across the country. The year surprises you in slow motion.

Another ticket sits in your back pocket. Your floors smell of lavender fabuloso. You tell him it doesn't smell like lavender and all and he says, no, it smells like purple, and you wonder if this is what America is. I haven't packed yet. 

I'm ready to surprise it back.

Ode.

Wind down the Hudson river at twilight, I open a book but spend an hour staring out the window, consider it a win. Arrive at Grand Central in a slight hum, people return to the world but not excessively. Instead of the 6 train, I walk down Lexington Avenue: a reminder of commutes past, reconnect with the city, wink at the Empire State building and the corner building on 28th and Lex where I first called this city home. The scent of the suburbs haunts me, their lush quiet cleanliness, their restricting parkways and hidden lives. When I arrive at my door, the super is playing Whitney Houston at full volume in the street, asks me to dance. Manhattan winks back. 

A lightning storm rolls in. The little apartment over the deli lies quiet, but kind. 

That's plenty.

Deserve

Make a right at the New Jersey Turnpike, barrel down lanes past Liberty Park and IKEA, to that part where the planes fly just at your side. Somewhere between the Statue and the airport, I heard my own voice, clear as day. You do not need to find your redemption arc, you have already fulfilled it. 

It's been almost 15 years now, it's no wonder I forget to remember, I sat in that window near the very last gate at Newark International airport, looking at the hazy skyline in the distance, and feeling with every cell in my body that leaving was the last thing I should be doing. How I wanted to run back to those crooked streets and exhausting buildings, how I wanted to patch my ruptured heart with solace. It would take over two years before I was back again. 

It would take another four before I was back for good. 

When we speak of redemption arcs, we think of driving desires for a future state. Redemption is always a chase, always a some day kind of anger. 

But the only thing I ever wanted was to never have to feel like I did in that airport window, to never have to say that home was anywhere but New York. And I clawed, and fought, and sacrificed, but did I not give myself that gift at last? Do I not already have all I ever bargained with god to receive?

I smiled then, two hours south on the 95, gray dreary New Jersey on my retina, I smiled. I have already found the treasure. If you let yourself see it, you are ready to come up for air.

(ands)

 (Sometimes you want to prove
yourself
to only
yourself. 

In those instances,
when you,
after all,
do not,

it's so much more disappointing.
You really didn't
have anything useful
To give.)

Posture

Sleep in a swelter, the fan in the window only almost cooling enough, and just precisely not. I wake early, feeling every square inch of my skin, knowing every pulsating breath of my blood. The ad that pops up on my phone says a Friends-themed cruise is coming, and you think how nothing can ever live up to our imagination, so why not live in it instead? I don't mean that like defeat, like cynicism, I mean it like how delicious pink cotton candy whipped cream feels eaten right off your finger, I mean it like opportunity. 

The monster is leaving, do you see it retreating with its tail tucked? I do not feel fear anymore, and still how hard it is to resume the life that came before. She sends an image of summers long ago, not too long ago but enough that we knew none of this darkness, and I wonder if I will able smile like that again. This year has made me tired more than fearful, resigned more than averse, I cannot forgive it this apathy under my eyes. Every day is a chance to dream it to be different. 

I am forever overwhelmed by this imagination. I don't mean that like defeat, either. 

There is no other way I would live,
if the choice were mine.

(Title)

At last, at last, the rain. It announces itself in a great darkness that spreads quickly in from the west, lingers under deep roars of thunder, cuts the heat like the silencing of a stern mother in church. He writes from the desert to say his father is home, to say his goodbyes. I told him the things I needed to say. She writes from the same desert to say This just comes at such a bad time for me. As though death ought to schedule its appearances more conveniently. The rain passes. 

It's too hard, sometimes, understanding the entirety of our finite little lives, our specks of dust in the great eons of the Universe. But would you rather trudge through the decades without giving it any thought, without dreaming what the point of it might be? No, surely, it must be better to feel too much than not at all. 

Must be better to wonder, feel wonder, feel wondrous,
and maybe even that is the answer for which
we search.

Set

The only thing you can ever do is start over. 

I wake bruised and tired, pummeled by a week's worth of waves, of dark storm clouds and apprehensive tip-toeing around the abyss. Make a cup of coffe, gather myself in words, wrap myself in piles of ink and word processors, read and re-read, polish, taste their meandering sentences on my tongue. This is where you live, a voice inside my head whispers. She is not wrong. 

I come up for air eventually, the demands of an outside world at last upon me, but I am reminded that those demands are only a means to an end. I get knocked off course and I forget, but this fact does not change. 

The only thing you can ever do is dust yourself off, get back on the horse. 

Remember where you're going, and head that way again.

Nox

The weekend swelters, primped New Yorkers spilling onto streets like it's Europe in August, it's hard to imagine we ever suffered. Droplets of sweat run down my back, coasting back and forth along sixth street to drinks and joys and gifts in the afternoon. This body looks different now, has experienced things I never intended, has been wronged in ways for which it never asked. 

Perhaps that's what it is to live a life. 

We sit in their garden later, the sounds of the East Village muffled behind a hundred years of bricks, under strange canopy rooted in dust. Summer is here now, unapologetic, unwilling to move backward, your life is racing ahead from under you, it feels impossible to catch up. There was a time when you knew just what you wanted out of this life, and now you fear you are too tired to find the treasures you've forgotten to name. How many of these stepping stones are built on cowardice? How much of any life lies on complacency? 

Perhaps life is too short to do differently. 

I pack up my things and go back inside. Turn the AC down low, let it cool my burning brow. He says how are you feeling in that way he does, like he means it. I tell him I'm trying to deal with the swirls of the storm and he says maybe I understand. Something reassuring in the spaces between.

The to-do-list yells at me. I turn up the fan. Don't know where to start.

Jubilee

Wake up early, the birds are at it again, the fire escape a hot bed of early morning mania, how can I be mad? Muscles aching, I step blindly into the morning, everything is the day after the storm now. I break and I break until finally I am done, it is that easy, it is the hardest thing in the world, I don't recognize my body anymore but the stubborn conviction has been with me all these years, I have no intention of hashtag improving it away. 

Friday arrives muggy and warm in New York, like summer so often is, all sweat and slow movements. You remember how this works. 

I think I remember how this works. 

We've all been away such a very long time. Welcome home, take your shoes off. Stay awhile. The water's fine, if you let it.

Wake

The morning after rises hesitant, weak in the knees perhaps, but bruised more than anything, wobbly and unsure of its footing. I had so many dreams, but what were they trying to say? What am I trying to say? It's so hard to listen with all this cotton in my ears. It is June now, a still summer rain outside the window, the city holds its breath trying to calculate what is to come. 

I make a cup of coffee, step slowly over the rubble in the living room. Know in the back of my mind the day demands much of me, because I shut the door the day before. I try to tell you I am scared, but the words come out convoluted, come out in poetry, gratifying in creativity, in the tangible amounts of paper they provide. It's street sweeping day again. Did you know I saw this place in my dreams and now it is mine? 

Life is a lot to get through. 

The coffee cools in its oversized mug, the streets remain quiet under the morning rain. You're doing the best you can. 

Keep doing it.

Process

All day you pace around a messy apartment, make excuses for the piles of inadequacy, the blank spaces on your word processor, as the darkness curls and winds itself at your spine. You know this game, have played it long enough, it isn't funny any more, I am not laughing anymore please stop. 

On the floor at my feet, piles of poetry flutter out from the typewriter, a reliable stream of blood when you have emptied yourself of tears, I don't have time for a mental breakdown you hear yourself explain across the line but collapses do not ask permission, they enter uninvited, you are pushing yourself and the brink closer together, like children playing house with dolls, will they won't they, you're flirting with disaster, toying with the audience, this post reads like a poem without rhyme

metaphorically, too. 

After my innards run out into a puddle on my sagging wood floor, dripping down the chipped paint on the rickety banister, the room around me lies silent. There's a calm after the storm we rarely mention. It is tired and fragile, unsure of itself and hesitant to step back into the stream, but it is quiet, holds just a morsel of space where something new can grow. 

I step out of the rubble. Dust myself off. Open the last beer in the refrigerator and sort through the piles. 

It wasn't what you had scheduled for your evening. But perhaps there is something of value there to salvage.

Letter

I wake confused, unfamiliar with the bed and with the darkness, the street sweeper passes by and I don't understand the calendar. Last night we sat outside a dive bar on Tompkins and everything about New York is changing but feels familiar. We said, I feel strangely nostalgic for the quarantine life in unison, and it seemed a forbidden sentence to speak out loud. I fear this year leaves us irreparably damaged, but then anything in life has the power to break us. It's on us to find the power to put ourselves back together again. Yesterday I sat at the typewriter again, so long absent, and remembered that I build myself through ink on pages, every time, one curled letter after another, this is how I make my self make sense.

The days are long and short all at once, the life rapidly racing towards inevitable ends, there's an answer in there somewhere and you are so determined to find it. 

The streets are quiet in the mornings now. Summer drapes its hazy perspective across the avenues, across the pandemic children emerging from their hideouts. What a strange and wondrous life, after all. 

And perhaps, that's the answer entirely.

New

The calendar pages twirl in unseasonably cool breezes; apparently it is summer. You look over your paltry piles of words from the last few weeks, a great sadness in your chest over how easily you let your visions trickle through your fingers. A hangover drifts along my brow, more reminders that I squander my dreams at the demands of others. There was something I was meant to do, whispers itself across your to-do list, across your shivering skin, reminds you you built this entire castle in the sky on purpose. It will not make itself clear. 

The truth is, it was always as clear as it needed to be. 

You close the book on your lists, put away the voices that tear at you from the outside. On your windowsill, an old typewriter waits patiently. unruffled by the passage of time, by the storms of inconsequential minutiae. You lift the lid, take a deep breath. 

Begin to remember why you came.