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.