Without This

A month comes to a close, a journey with it. I tie up loose ends, bringing in the harvest from the yard and cutting down the flowers. Winter is coming. Wipe down the counters, trace the days across the crumbs they left behind. I take one last run on the mountainside, make it longer than before, feel how the altitude has arranged itself within my lungs, feel how my love for it has brought familiarity back into my steps. I'm sorry I left you, I didn't mean to hurt you when I meant to hurt myself. I feel healed. 

Sometimes we go into the desert not knowing what we are looking for, and sometimes we are given the answers despite forgetting to ask. I return to the little shoebox on Avenue B with a calm in my veins, an ache in my muscles, a lightness on my brow that has not been there since the before times. 

We are not back in the before times, You cannot step in the same river twice, at some point you let go of the house that burned to the ground. We have to build our castles out of the diamonds we unearth in the ashes.

I sat on the deck, watching the last sun set behind the mountains. The last sun of infinite, for it does not set for me alone. This little vessel of my body is broken, and scarred, and weary, but it has carried me all the way here. What gratitude would it be to leave it behind? We are enough.

Take your vessel, your diamonds, your lessons learned. Go home. Start again.

Main

The silence aches in you like thunder, like the opposite of its nothingness, it takes up more space than whatever was there before. She packs her bags and reminds you it is almost time for you to do the same. There's another life waiting for me at the other end of a red eye, and after all these years I still don't know how to meld the two (the three, the four). He walks you by the school bus that changed your life once, you still haven't figured out quite how to explain to him how the stars spoke to you, how your broken pieces were swept up in its embrace. I cannot focus on putting the words together with this current running across my skin. 

The sun rises in impossible beauty across the mountains. I stare at it again, again, every morning it's exactly the same and completely new, 30 years I have been coming to this sunrise and I still have not tired of marveling at it. The deer meander across the field, Nature is reliable in its habits, you wonder why you fight so hard to be the opposite. The vegetables in the garden are beginning to tire with the season. It's time to bring them in. 

It's time to move to the next step, whatever it may be.

Center

For days you do not breathe, only live. A body in motion, a valley in transition, the mountains tower over all your little questions, it is a comfort. Your ride the lift all the way to the summit, and it is not the altitude that takes your breath away. His hands are inside your skin until they are not. She says, I never knew this place existed. Everything is smoke and mirrors and you wonder what it’ll look like from the other side. Maybe we missed our shot. 

The nights are mild again. The shooting stars pierce you with their absence. 

The answers are never painless to come by. 

Like the Rain

This can't be real, she says, looking out at the view below. This can't be how they live. We sit in silence for hours, around the fire, under the stars, we sit breathing in the desert air like it has answers, they are always just on the tip of your tongue here, it's impossible not to think you could reach them. 

I wake slowly, reluctantly. The dreams are too comfortable, too inviting, reality too stark in contrast. 

The answer lies just beyond your outstretched fingertips. 

You vow to keep on trying for it. 

You didn't come all this way just to let it go.

Promise

The quiet country nestles itself into your bloodstream. You go on long runs, learn how to use power tools in an unwieldy garden, bake for the neighbors, and spend your evenings on the porch under the quiet stretch of the Milky Way. It is strange how quickly you adapt to space, stretch your limbs and your lungs across the rolling fields, make plans about a life so different than what happens in your Manhattan shoebox. You think there is some sort of secret in the desert, an answer nestled between the folds of the mountainside, and you wonder how long you would have to stay out here to find it. 

By morning, the frost has arrived for the season. It seems impossible under the scorching midday sun, but that doesn't make it any less true. There's something in religions that says your god sees you even when you don't see them, but I think this is what they meaning. Every state is fleeting, every moment will pass, this one, too.

The point is what you make of
how you remember it.

Feel, and Lose

Too many days you spend glued to your to-do list, staring out at perfect fall days on the mountain from behind a computer screen, this isn’t the way. I close the laptop lid, lace my sneakers, and set my sights on the trail. 

A few miles in, one garter snake, two steam trains, and a flock of pelicans at the shoreline below later, it was like something returned to me, something in the steps, in the miles, in the stories that appear when your body is too tired to do anything but continue. 

Later, the sun setting behind your open fire, the sun setting behind your glass of whiskey, the sun setting behind your better judgment, The words that make their way out creak from disuse and trample over your previous promises but they are out now.

You fall asleep under the Milky Way. All is as it should be. 

Re:surge

A storm pulls in across the mountains to the west, you see it drag itself over the summit and swallow the horizon in a great disappearing act. You know the trick, you're a master at disappearing, yourself. Another double rainbow stretches across the valley in the aftermath, the mountains reappear, crisp, bright, their lines all sharpened. You emerge from your fogs chipped at the side and hazy, like all your pieces have not yet been put back together. 

But no matter. 

Today I read a sentence that made me cry. Today, a story unfolded itself right before my eyes and I thought there's a magic here, and I know I've taken a lot of wrong turns in my life but I always find my way back to this right one and as long as I do, I still have a chance. I made my deal with the devil, well you know what? 

If he's going to take everything he'd better come around to pay up.

Shuffle

Wake with the remains of despair behind your temples, too much water loss for the desert to bear, it appears like a hangover, trying to sweep under the rug the darknesses that transpired in the late night. The stars silent, steady in the firmament, even the coyotes still. I dream of geographic solutions again, again, the blood of my ancestry forever trying to run, the roots of our family tree set neatly along the surface to easily be pulled up. Wherever you go, there you are, my old roommate used to always say. Life can be hacked, every piece of media trying to abscond with my attention yells over it. Perhaps there are no solutions. 

But a whole life without one seems too long.

Keep Moving

Stay up late into the starry night with only cicadas for company and sleep well into the morning, sunrise already flecking the mountains outside your window. Across the valley, majestic ranges tower with foliage on fire and golden light across the cliffsides. A storm front drags itself along the periphery, painting rainbows at regular intervals. The clouds lift, pulling two double rainbows behind it. They stretch from one end of the valley to the other and you think maybe this is where the treasure is, after all.

Coming out of the depths is always a strange reach back into reality. You peer out from behind a corner, cowering to see what mess you've made, clean up your wounds and look for bandages big enough to cover them. Paint a smile on top of the frail surface you've repaired. One step at a time. 

The word processor lies quiet in front of you, waiting. It knows your steps are cautious now, measured, no longer vivid and reckless, no longer as colorful as they were in the midst of the storm. But they move forward. They pick up the pieces and put the story back together again. You reach your fingers toward the keyboard. One step at a time. 

Start again.

But I Saved

The drugs don't work. The airplane tickets don't work. The drinks don't work. I sat in a panorama window with nothing but endless sky ahead, nothing but endless possibility at the tips of my finger and felt nothing but heavy cinderblocks tied around my chest. Wherever you go, there you are, and here I thought this illness was just a fleck of dust I could brush off my shoulder. Who would have known how bittersweet this would taste. 

A therapist tries to tell you that you approach each day in scarcity, that you scoop from a well of empty to fill your cup and wonder why your soul is dry. There was a time when I thought I deserved magic, but I don't know anymore. The report cards aren't adding up, I forgot to give the teacher an apple, I forgot my deals with the devil meant he takes his payment first and keeps you dangling for scraps of what you were promised.

The desert lies quiet outside the window. You can scream into it all you like, that is the blessing of the desert, it doesn't scream back. The desert has weathered the eons, it can wait you out and weather your bones too. Under the Milky Way, you are insignificant. 

You plead with the devil to give you a little more time.
Begin to claw at the bottom of the well. 

 

dig until you find a trickle.

Pasts

Prologue

Dark clouds rolled in over the valley, lightning bouncing against the mountains and pulling thunder behind it like a chariot; I slept like a baby. Before dawn, I woke again to the complete silence of the Great West, soft tendrils of sunlight sifting through the desert grass and turning the mountainside foliage to gently waking embers. Another day, another gift, I whispered into my coffee, unable to take in the magnitude of such an offer. All this, for me? I opened a window, let the morning breathe for me, as words and worlds stretched and danced around my head. All this, for me. I reached my hand into the envelope again, longing for every minute of the rest of the day to come:

If the Word isn't mean to be 
my salvation, 
why does it call me so?

End of Your Map

You wake early, it's dark still, your body unsure where it finds itself. A hint of light breathes itself across the mountains and in through your windows, you are not yet sure how to answer them. Your to-do list blisters and burns like a fire at the other end of the room, reluctant to leave you alone, and you squeeze your eyes tightly to ignore it. A manuscript lies closer, whispering to you of potential, breathes air into your lungs until you feel light, hopeful. Your maths aren't adding up, and you know it. 

Outside, the fields are washed in golden yellows, in September sun, the mountain shrugging into flecks of red, you ache with a melancholy that can only appear in emptiness, in missing. The answer eludes you, again, again, you are always a step behind, a step aside, you are always falling off at the shoulder, he says why make plans for a future we do not know we will have, and the idea looks different now than when we were in our 20s, because now it's possible we mean it. If you leave only one thing behind you, do you want it to be perfectly executed paper work, do you want it to be timely answered emails? 

Or do you want it to be fireworks?

Only in Poems (Remain)

The house is empty, suddenly, growing in every direction with newfound space, like a deep breath, like you live in a lung. You walk around the countless rooms, wonder how many times over your Manhattan shoebox could fit within these square feet, and the answer is staggering. I bring in barrels of tomatoes, cut them up for preserving, put them in jars for the long winter. The late summer sun beams its dry heat into my cold chest, you begin to dream of sabbaticals, begin to think that maybe the answer was buried here somewhere all along. When you tell her you could live in a shed in the woods, she doesn't believe you, but she's never seen the way your eyes light up in these mountains, has never heard you laugh in a hundred miles of silence. 

He says what'll it be: Kenya, Tokyo, next door? and you remember the world still lies at the tip of our fingers, at the other end of an airplane ticket, I said once the Road is life and I know know I meant it. 

I only have to make you believe it.

Rise

It rains in the desert, the late night violent with thunder, the valley lit by lightning. The earth floor turns green in a flourish; it will be brief, but a breath is still a breath. The reservoirs are still empty. The desert giveth, the desert taketh back. This was not yours to begin with. 

I sit at the desk in the early morning, the valley ahead dark and quiet again. Soft tendrils of pink light begin to stretch their way above the ridge to the east. House lights flicker in the distance. Thirty years ago I lay jet lagged looking out at the valley at night, counted headlights, followed streetlights turn from green to red to green, I knew something had changed within me, and I could never go back to who I was before. 

We break and bend in the storms along the way, they leave their mark, every step forward means we will never again be who we were. This is the meaning. 

Keep going.

Former

Early in the morning, drive through the mountain pass. Mist rising off the valley, fairies dancing across the water, in your youth you knew there was something otherworldly about that brief glimpse into the beyond. Nothing is as silent as daybreak. Farewells at the airport, nostalgic drives through old haunts, arrive back at the turn in the road when the sun is high - miss the house and have to reverse - dive back into a rhythm that reminds itself of home. 

The American West aches in me, calls me back, woos me with its dark wood and high mountain air, drags the desert across my skin, whispers love songs at the nape of my neck. I thought this was a place I visited. 

Instead it is a place that never leaves me.

Silence

Every step is familiar, even though the memory of it lies deep, struggles to resurface, groans with disuse. Schlep the bag down subway stairs, transfer at Jay Street and make sure you're catching the right A train. The storm left a flood in its wake and the first train runs local, so you wait. Take your shoes off and your laptop out in one smooth flick of your wrist, arrive later than usual but just as they call your boarding group, it is perfect. For a brief moment, right at takeoff, remember the surge in your chest, the roar of the machine, the impossible act of weightlessness. Manhattan appears in the distance, a stonehenge of its own making, a silent wave goodbye from the ground, before you launch into the billowing clouds above, ignorant of the chaos and destruction they cause on the ground, it is a gift. 

Return to a familiar valley, a familiar color palette, a familiar quiet in your chest and you wonder if it will call you home one day, too, if you will be just like every other person who only feels settled in the return. When I wake, it is still dark out, quiet the kind that permeates your bones, the short space before the world begins like an urgent ball of potential in your hand. What will you make with it?

Watch dawn sift across the mountains, slow clouds meandering like snakes along the valley floor. 

Decide that whatever you make had better be magic.

Try Try Again

You emerge as if from under rubble, as if from out of disaster, survivors guilt and doubt all wrapped in one, the knife comfortable in my hand, like it is part of the body, ready to slice again through old wounds, ready to dig into thick scars, you know you make the recovery harder but it is impossibly hard to resist, impossible to evade the satisfying relief at the other end of harm. 

We run and run in this life

But it’s hard to feel like we don’t just end up right who we started. 

Eleven eleven

A rain falls again, after months of drought it makes itself a habit, the Manhattan streets slick with it. The sun sets so early now, have you noticed? Like it flipped a switch and suddenly everything is dark before dinner. Winter is coming. We spend a warm afternoon on an east village rooftop, rolling our eyes at the youth, and then I have to spend a full Sunday within the four walls of my apartment, scrubbing agony out of the corners with a manic obsession. The darkness waxes and wanes, takes different shapes, waits behind corners to surprise you. 

But you have a few new tricks yourself now. Your back a little more limber, you do cartwheels around the illnesses. Not well, but at least you are not constantly drowning like once you were. 

At least the air still reaches your lungs. 

Flexor

When I get to the car, the back right tire is flat, slowly seeping out air in silence, nothing dramatic. We don’t do drama, the two of us, we just slowly exhale ourselves into nothing. The spare tire is soft, but it tries its hardest. Late at night, inside the track along the river, I stretch out an aching body and turn the tight lug nuts of my limbs to malleable tools, aids through a life. 

September is achingly beautiful, the uncoupled furiously running around to find someone to hold again after a summer of freedom. You watch the frenzy in amusement, wonder if you’re ready to throw your heart into fire again, if it could take one more beating. In my dream, a bus careens toward Las Vegas in the desert at night, and all I could think was how it looked like New York, and smiled. We dive into a tunnel and reappear at a gas station parking lot near an underground hotel. 

Even in dreams, we are always trying to make our way home. 

Back to School

A group of NYU cross country runners pours out of the side track, and if there is any sign of fall it is this. Everything returns: the river is busy, the dating app is busy, the subway is busy, my muscles are busy, it’s been two and a half years of hibernation and now we are coming back to whatever life was meant to be but wasn’t. I don’t know where to start so I revert to working too many hours. For the first time in such a long time I think I am okay. It’s a strange feeling when your bones don’t recognize it. 

Another ticket lies in my back pocket. It’s time to pack again. It’s time to arrive again. 

It’s time to live

again. 

Change

You return to the city humid, warm, it all feels the same and you revel in the much-needed rain. By morning, the change is here: a chill in the air, a sun reluctant to rise. There’s a lump in your throat you try hard to ignore. 

In the car, driving down, I took deep breaths and tested their flavor on the tip of my tongue: it’s just that I feel like myself again. Crawling out of mental illness messes with your senses, with your intuition, and you can’t believe anything you see. The deeper you fall, the longer it takes just to return to that place where you started. 

But you’ve been here before. You are wise with the years now. 

Dust yourself off. Begin again. It’s time to move forward, at last. 

Brooklyn Heights

You woke in someone else's bed this morning, and you don't want to pretend otherwise anymore. Secrets weave themselves around these city streets but they burn off with the morning sun, drifting like the remains of ghosts out the New York Bay. 

I return to the desk in the attic, try to will myself to work, try to will myself into the panic that feeds the capitalist machinery, that keeps the hamster wheel running. Instead, the return of a long-lost friend: the creative swirls that appear in procrastination, that only appear when you are reluctant to walk the wide and straight. In your spine, the feeling of sitting for hours on a back porch, dreaming into the foliage, the feeling of sitting in a window, firing salvos into a typewriter and coming up with symphonies. 

You woke in someone else's bed this morning, and perhaps that is just as well. 

September is here,
and now we choose which battles we want to fight,

which weapons we want to bring when we do.

Furnish

The thunderstorm rolls in but thinks better of it, leaves a few showers, cools the air. By the time I go up to the attic to sleep, there's a chill to the evening. They close up the village pool for the summer, neighbors say See you in winter, there's a return to whatever comes next. You are not sure if you are ready. You tell the children stories at bedtime and think there has to be an answer in all the tales you weave. There has to be an end to this yarn. You feel full of the summer nights, of coming back from a pandemic, of gathering rosebuds. 

September is here now. It's time to decide what to make of the flowers you've picked.

40

I want so much joy for you. 

You'll have these demons forever, you know - maybe they are with you even today - but there always comes a moment again, when things feel Good, and that is worth 

Everything. 

How Many Days?

The words appear. You were never really in charge of when they would beging to churn, weave strange curlicues in your chest and make the skin of your scalp tingle. September is here, your heart is full of summer sunshine, your brain is clear from the darkest fog, the illness seeping slowly out of you like poison diluting in a river. You are ready for stories again, ready to be swept away in poetry and trying unsuccessfully to answer the Big Questions, what else is life if not digging your hands into the sand and trying to find a miracle?

The sun rises slowly over the Hudson River. The chill in the air races down from the mountains, for a brief moment you see again so clearly all of the treasures you believed could be yours. The path toward them is still there. Overgrown with the thorny thicket and deep with mud the kind that tries to drown you but it is still there. 

And as long as you keep walking it, it is not too late to make it through.

Snows

Dream of road trips in snow and restaurant bills I cannot pay. I’ve started to think too much about times that have passed, months of joy, a time when my skin buzzed, I know my skin knows how to buzz but I don’t know how to ask it to. There’s a lever somewhere, there’s a door to open, it’s an itch somewhere deep in me like an addiction but I cannot find the drug to scratch it. The morning is cool now, fall is coming, death is coming, you’re trying to reach the door before it closes for good, this panic runs 40 years deep and you have yet to find a solution. 

But the sun is shining still, the weekend is long. The answer is hiding here somewhere, and you’re still determined to find it. 40 years of questions. 

You just keep walking. 

Seventh

It is the first night I sleep with the window open. When I step into the street, there’s just the slightest hint of cool air: the season’s first crisp. The forecast still drones on about summer heat, but you know the difference when it arrives. 

Your brain kicks back into gear, firing up like a rusty old machine, oil sputtering and the ignition coughing. It is time for a change, you are ready. I imagine a death sentence, being given six months left to live. What would I do? 

The answers are simple, arrive quickly from my very depths. 

I would gather all my words, make sure the stories had a chance to survive without me. Then I would tell you I love you. 

That is really all there is.