Emerge

I wake early, prickles of dawn rising over the brick building to the east, streets quiet but the trees rampant with jubilee. Make my way across Tompkins Square Park before my limbs are quite awake but chest heaving with manic breath, I gulp it down like I can't get enough, like I have hungered for months - and the truth, of course, is that I have. The scents return, of warming asphalt, of daffodils in slender shoots along the dog run, of New York rising. Yesterday I cried at everything, the immensity of life hinted in each little interaction, each scene, and I was not sorry. Nearly two years have past since the end of the world, and we have not yet begun to put the rubble behind us, look back to see what we've gone through. We are still clawing our way out. 

But I am beginning to see the light between the masses, my dear. I have begun to see a spring, a sliver of hope, I have seen the daffodils shoot from the earth, I have opened my windows wide now, my dear, I know it is early yet, but

All of life begins with a sliver.