New

It's just a few steps, past the birch trees, at the end of the path. Warm cliffs, smoothed by the ice ages, sloping down to the salty waters of the west coast. We find a spot near the shoreline, arrange the day as it has been for decades: coffee thermoses, homemade sandwiches, store-bought biscuits. They brought you here because they know how much better you breathe when your eyebrows whiten, when your shoulders brown and your lips taste of the sea. They brought you here because they know how four years away ache in your very bones.

Somehow, four years are magically washed away with one dive into the ocean, one evening at their dinner table. Somehow, none of the empty days and quarantined miles remain in your spine, though they were lodged there like splinters every day that came before. I sleep so well at night, it's hard to believe the darkness was ever that close. 

Something new is coming, but not yet, not now. 

Now we rest.
Now, we breathe.

Land

Upon arrival, three years of absence are wiped from your slate. Nothing has changed. The fields still rolling, the industrial edges of the large town continue their brutalist boxes of utilitarianism. The weather is lagom: not good, not bad, it just is, unoffensive, gray skies and soft ripples of sunshine, you feel no certain way about it. Boulders of the countryside whisper of giants playing games, the woods speak of trolls, you believe all of it because what is not to believe. At the train station, the conductor is flustered, yelling into the crowds that we got the wrong train set and it's each person for themselves, grab a seat if you can find it. I find a window seat so that when jet lag invariably finds me, I do not lean on a neighbor. As a child I loved the trains - always this sense of adventure, always a suspension of rules and reality. I feel that way still. 

Three years of absence like they never were. Entire relationships, families, new children have appeared in the space between. You think you are the same, but it is not true. An entire earthquake has come and gone. Every cell in your body has been exchanged for a new one. Some of them dented, some of them stronger than the ones which came before. It is too soon yet to say who you are now. 

You are older.
You are entirely new.

Gate B68

At some point in the late morning, the system clicks into place. Old neural pathways spring to life, like there was just dust on the wires and it’s coming off. In a trance I finish work, undaunted by the unpleasant emails. I set up the OOO while I water the plants, clean out the fridge and weigh the suitcase. Rush to Penn station in a thunderstorm, could walk the steps to the terminal with your eyes closed, arrive much to early, recognize the skyline view from the window. 

How many years of coming and going, each time grateful that Most goodbyes are not forever. A strange few years lie behind us. We are not out of these woods yet. 

But oh, how sweet just the light where the forest parts. 

Packed

The thunder amasses in the distance, readies itself to pummel the coastline just as my itinerary fires up. The city lies beaten by the heat, unable to move, unwilling to smile the way it normally does. I wander around the apartment looking at pieces of clothing not touched in ages. Wonder is this who I am now? Is this someone I could be? before weighing the outfits against my own self-awareness. A suitcase fills up. A world that nearly feels post-pandemic rises up on the horizon. There's a hope in your chest you haven't felt in years. Years. The loss is inconceiveable. 

But there's nothing to say the revenge can't be
beyond your imagination.

Re:lax

I take the day off. Walk all the way around the little village early in the morning, before the heat swelters. The Hudson river looks like a fat snake, too hot to move. I sit on the back porch reading children's fantasy, think only I can do better (I have done better) and devour another hundred pages. The day slips between my fingers, rivulets of sweat coursing down my body, the summer escapes me, the life escapes me, I feel like the answer is here, right here somewhere just out of my reach, tip of my tongue, I know there is some sort of magic and we can touch it - I have touched it before - if only I could have one more moment, if only I could pause the world for just a little longer I think I could catch it again, I...

In my mind, I know the futility. 

But the promise of gold at the end of the rainbow is forever what moves us forward into the life.

Wild Woods

You arrive in the country. It is all rolling hills and unstoppable vines in overwhelming humidity. Something inside your brain clicks. A switch is turned. An inability to hustle appears, a reset, a lack of grit. You forget your computer three flights up and pick up a book instead. You see your email inbox twist and weave but figure out how to ignore it entirely. It turns out to be easier than you thought. 

One night we drink too much and stay up talking about obscure music and house hunting. Topics of no consequence, only delight. The next day I have to sleep half the day just to recover. It rains in torrents, as if forgiving the slight. There are no grand thoughts, no wild plans. Only still morning walks down to the river. Only silence inside my otherwise constantly humming body. Silence. What a concept. 

I close my computer again. Find a cup of coffee. Find the book again. Sit on porch steps and think absolutely nothing. 

Summer came for me at last.

Time

July races to its ends. Leaves that recently were bright sprouts darken, grow tired, I know how they feel. As you grow, you realize that you cannot go back again, you cannot start over, you will not have your entire future ahead of you. On the radio, a voice you know from your youth speaks of loss, of grasping at straws, of allowing every last vein within your skin to feel the immensity of the world. How we are insignificant. 

Once, years ago, when you felt you had everything left to live and all the immensity of the world ahead of you, you said

Nothing really matters

which means that everything does 

You get to choose what your life will have been about. Perhaps it doesn’t matter then how much time you have left to confirm it. 

Variety

The coffeeshop has a quiet hum to it, rising to a buzz by the time late Friday afternoon rolls around. The Gen Z barista tells me the payment system is down so it's cash only and he jots down the sales on the back of a brown paper bag. An enormous photo of Norm Macdonald graces the far wall and you wonder if we're still doing irony. Air conditioning makes you forget the dripping temperature outside. The report from the motherland is a chill and asks you to pack thermal underwear. Nowhere is perfect. There's a knot on the side of your neck that yells at you to slow down, to take a break, but new deadlines appear on the horizon and you chase whatever comes next. Your father says watch out, you got those broken genes from me, and you think how easy it is to recognize your flaws when it seems too late to do anything about them. 

You try to remember it is not too late for you to do anything
about anything. 

A slight break appears in the corner of your eye. 

You decide to catch the wave. Decide you aren't dead yet.
Despite how it seems, lately.

Reciprocity

The immense melancholy of summer evenings sets in. It enters you like setting sunrays across your chest, just below the clavicle, and then floats gently down through your belly, landing heavy. The way that the Manhattan skyline looks at twilight, when you're in Brooklyn watching a movie under the stars, fireflies in the bushes and children up past their bedtime. The idea that everything may just be starting, but you remember your mortality in the same breath. 

I walked ten miles around the island today. It told you there was time yet. 

Not a lot

but endless.

Sublimate

I wake early, too early, the hours of sleep under my belt wildly inadequate, this will backfire I have time to think before resigning to leaving the bed. There’s a slight breeze along the river, a break from the heatwave, you know it won’t last and take deep breaths into the morning waves. Week and a half until departure. Week and a half until a return to a world from before everything fell apart. I take the pill. The voice on the radio speaks of ailing parents, my landlord writes to say his mother passed. “She was one hell of a woman,” he says, and I tell him that’s the best legacy one could hope for. 

Life is short. You know better than to waste it on other money’s deadlines. The fog clears again. 

You get back up. 

Wouldn't That be Something

It's ten pm before you finally put the final period at the end of the last line. Months of work take a breath, you don't know how you did it. Find the tequila and make a drink, feel the pain in your body for the first time, feel yourself for the first time. Refill the prescription. 

Somewhere out there are answers. Reach them one step at a time.

Yours Now

Monday evening on 5th street, later than in the before times, but then isn't everything later now, slower somehow, not as successfully urgent. Your car is parked next to the writing bar, all the little joys gathered like family; if only they knew what we had gone through, if only they knew. 

 We barely know, ourselves. 

The bar smells of old beer on wood floors, of illicit cigarettes. The bartender is new, we regulars introduce ourselves, welcome her to a space that isn't ours but feels like it. The neighborhood blog says it's Manhattanhenge, you get all your relevant news from an old, cobbled Blogger template now, the rest of the world is too much to see. If only we knew. I fear every creative urge has died in me, that every imaginative whim has curled back into itself and hardened, forgetting what it is to dream, or delight, or discover something entirely unexpected. 

The second I sit down, far from the demands of my inbox, my fears fade to the sidelines. Little sprouts of hope make their way out of my heart, twist and climb toward the light, tender tendrils adhering to the inside of my skin as they grow, carrying new stories on their backs, carrying questions that demand answers. I am tired now, more tired than I maybe ever have been, but when the tendrils make their way into the light, you do not turn them down, you do not look the other way. 

We are coming out of the darkness, I just know it. 

We will make our way into the light.

Way to You

Brooklyn in an early Thursday evening, summer sunlight across the park slope streets, there’s a part where the subway goes above ground and you see the whole city spread out before you, nothing hurts in that breath, nothing can really get to you when the city lies at your feet, one late august evening I rolled into this city and since that moment I have never really left, never truly let go of its scintillating promise. I wrote a list today of how far we’ve come and all I can see is this life is worth living no matter how many times you let yourself believe it isn’t. 

It still breaks my heart that it comes as a surprise every time, but fuck it. 

Heartbreak hasn’t killed me once. 

My Newt

Panic seizes me and takes the productivity from out of my fingertips. A catatonic inclination leans me against the couch cushions, says it's already too late and the pages of my to do list bury me like a deck of cards in Wonderland.

My legs are sore but I will them to rise, will them not to drown in the dubious truths of my inner monologues. 

Nothing is over
until it is well and truly

Over.

Hour

The morning after lies like garbage along the East River, discarded fireworks and remains of picnics scattered along the sides of early bird runner paths. I send my mother real estate listings for the upstate and we drool over acreage, over a life spent with grass between your bare feet. Little inklings of story unearth themselves while I try desperately to dig through the quicksand of work around my neck, this is the great deceit of aging. It was never wrinkles, they just pretended it was to distract you. 

Everything is a ruse if you let it. 

You allow yourself to stare out of the window for just a brief moment, but it is enough for the whims to take hold. In the trees across the street you see fairied creatures come alive, watch the leaves unfurl into playgrounds, hear songs of unknown lands sing themselves against the backdrop of a Manhattan that doesn't feel real by comparison. 

Everything still lives under the leaves, under the snow. Everything is still in hibernation, waiting for a little attention, waiting for you to make the space for the unordinary to come alive again.

of the Free

The fireworks carry on unabated, you watch them from your bed in disbelief. From across the country, news comes in of at least two mass shootings into the holiday crowds. From the nation's capital, a steady stream of law that removes our rights, one by one. We are itching for a war to make us feel better again. Your parents look at houses but think maybe their immigrant dreams misled them and this isn't where they ought to be looking, at all. At the end of a long weekend away from your to-do list, the Words resurface, remind themselves to you, turn into poetry around the edges of your skin. There was something I was meant to be doing on this earth. 

Whatever this is, it isn't it. 

An answer is starting to wind itself through your heart. Like I dream you only just cannot remember. 

But I am getting there. Hold your breath.

Over

We greet the morning with pain and suffering. Waves of nausea roll through the group. I make my way out into the neighborhood, running shoes laced up but the inside of my brains too large to fit inside the skull, I sweat out the ills. We drive to the southern shore, revel in a perfect summer day. I stand in the ocean for an hour, letting each wave pummel me or lift me, it’s a delicate negotiation and we both come out winners. By the time the night is dark and full of stars, my body is tired. Sated. 

Summer comes. I am here to take it. 

In Too Deep

Should we go to the beach? someone says, five bottles in and the kitchen a disaster. The last flecks of dusk disappear on the horizon, and premature fourth of July parties dot the country clubs of the north shore. By the time we make it to the uneven pebbles, the bay lies dark before us. I do not hesitate. Long strokes into the Long Island sound, I know only the weight of water, how it cools your brow, how it clears the weight in your chest. The wine recedes quickly from your veins, you are healed. 

By the time we go to bed, everything is quiet. I think there is no medicine like salt water. 

And that is enough for now. 

July

For a month, I do not write. You needn't point it out, I know what this means. Last time it happened there was too much regular work, too much regular world, the glow of poetry got sort of wiped off my edges, there's a better word for worn in my mother tongue, do you think we'd be better off not knowing there were options out there that would fit us more right? 

For a month, I do not write. I speak nothing of fireflies at twilight, of rolling hills or high tide, of late runs along the East River with newly caught fish gasping in the fresh air. Say nothing of how the medications weave their way into my blood stream and I begin crying unexpectedly one morning in a current of people and realize, the feelings are back. Like my insides are no longer filled with Nothing, and everything returns all at once, in a jumble. The jumble makes me remember stories and how I want to let them bloom. I have not told you of the small graces. 

For a month, I do not write. 

Perhaps that is all behind us, now.