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.