Eve

The street fills with available parking spots, you see treasure in the emptiness, how quiet the neighborhood in an apocalypse. I find an orphaned Christmas tree two doors down and drag it back to the shoebox - the tree is too big but I am determined. 

Later, when the last kids on sixth street are asleep, I sit on my couch and watch the lights twinkle in it’s branches. This bright pink couch that I bought only because I thought it might bring me joy (and it did.) This tree that I schlepped up four flights, leaving needles like a trail on the landings, because I thought it might bring me joy (and it did). After two years of hollow pain (two years is mild because were you not shattered long before?) to be filled with joy is a strange deliverance. I run my hands along the brick around my border up fireplace. Brick wall. Like I dreamed when New York was still a fantasy. Brick wall, alphabet avenues, New York in my pocket, I loved you long before we met but I love you much, much more now, it’s a strange gift, time. It convolutes and twists our images like fun-house mirrors but at the end of the ride we are still who we were when we walked in. If you leave me when we’re twisted, you’re forgetting one day this will just be a photograph we laugh about. 

I go to bed late, too late, awaiting miracles and saviors but the truth is I’ve been saving myself for ages and I think we’re starting to get somewhere. We’re making our way through this whole damn amusement park my love, are you ready? Best hold my hand, we’ve a ways yet 

To go.