by the Fruit

I walked past your writing bar and you weren't there, she writes, as you turn the corner for the home stretch to reach it. You run into each other with a giggle, minute New York moments like a wink across the avenues. Lap it up. I scribble in my notebook, it is coming, and it's been so long since I believed it. Stare at a blank piece of paper entirely unafraid, because the horizon is only possibility, the unwritten can be anything, how much is a used car in Kansas? There used to be a time when you spent your days trying to find out. 

So you drag out your canvases again, drag out your pills and potions and rays of sunlight, try to mix whatever sparks you remember how to find in a cauldron of all your tricks, drink your medicine, try to drown yourself in it, somewhere in here there is a magical formula, somewhere in here is the secret to making new york love you, making you love anything at all, creating flower buds out of the ashes you carry in your closed fists, there was a time you resigned yourself to stay under the cover and not figure out how to do more than breathe, but it turns out life is unbearable when you aren't living it. The future will arrive at your doorstep no matter the ashes that pile along the other side of it.

The unwritten can be anything,
the only thing it can't be is nothing. 

Only Moments

February rolls in and out like the tide, blustering arctic winds and replaces it with spring sunshine, the flowers and people alike careful at each step lest it be treacherous. I woke early on a Sunday morning without the fear of darkness in my chest, how novel a concept. 

Who knew these lungs could be used for breathing?

Clock Out

A snowstorm drags across the continent, loses speed before it hits the Eastern Seaboard and leaves the city with a blanket sky and chills. I leave work early, pile into an unmade bed and read stories from other lifetimes that look no different from today. Some of us always suffered, could not ignore the weights of the world, even if we painted it ourselves. Maybe we were just trying to create excuses that would let us curl up in unmade beds. He sends pictures of dirty slush in the north country, and you commiserate over these weeks when salvation seems to peek out only to be buried by arctic winds and darkness. 

Two weeks until daylight saving begins.

You look at houses for sale in the country. 

The point is there are things yet to do, life yet left to live. You only didn't want anything because a cancer had devoured your serotonin molecules, you only didn't want any thing because the mechanism of want lay broken inside your machinery. A top up of oil can do nothing when the engine is disconnected, you know, you know, you know, and yet here we are, 25 years later and dumbfounded. It would be funny if it wasn't so inordinately stupid. 

Eventually you tire of wanting to die, and you get back up on that horse which insists on carrying you on, ever on. The choices we have are few. But it's easier to stay in the saddle,
when you remember how to want to.

I hope you brought your walking shoes
'Cause it's quite a ways, from what I understand

 The itch returns, it calls and aches and thrashes against the great cavern that is your chest. You listen only to voices who speak of a life beyond, imagine only futures where the wheels are rolling. Your therapist flails with questionnaires and platitudes, so you hide the knives in the drawer. Spare her the inconvenience of seeing your blood on the tracks. 

Emerging from out of years of illness is like lifting a heavy blanket off yourself and finding an entire world on the other side, a world that carried on without you and which offered horizons you could no longer imagine existed. When every day is just about putting one foot in front of the other to get to the finish line of surviving it, it's hard to remember that
you used to know how to fly.

Daytona

Waking is slow, reluctant in a rainy cloud cover, the sweet taste of last night still on your brow. A book lies open in the bed next to you, you escape the covers only to find coffee and return, hungrily burying yourself back in the pages. A work day beckons, but you declare I am a writer, and ignore the schedule. Nothing in the material world is so important it cannot wait until tomorrow. Do they not know the whims of the world, do they not know you have to catch the creative waves when they come and nothing is more important than telling stories. The robots take over our waking worlds but the thing they cannot do is feel the pang of unrequited love, carve the fear of unsurmountable challenges, know the relief of spring blooms after a long, cold, dark winter, and as such you will never want for occupation. You just have to figure out how to do it better.

I close the inbox, the to do list, the phone. Make another cup of coffee. Sit staring at the sky, the swirls of imagination beyond, dig your fingers into the ore. Believe that everything is just about to begin.

Dive

You are back at your bar, back at your table in the corner, back to the bartender who pours your drink without asking and tells you about his weekend with just the right level of familiarity. It makes you feel like New York is coming back, and you are ready to welcome it with open arms. (You thought you were before, but you were not. You were fooling yourself, but it only became clear in hindsight.) 

A couple at the bar are going through the motions of an early days date, listing names and ages and gossip. We hate Brian, she says, waving the empanada she brought into the restaurant because I know you don't serve food here right? Tbe man shifts in his seat. Well then I hate Brian, too, he says, but he didn't have to. She wasn't waiting for it. 

I went for a run along the river today, warm sunshine, short sleeves, benches full of holiday revelers. A tiny patch of yellow croci broke through behind a tree, beaming into the afternoon. For a while, for a winter, for a pandemic depression there was nothing, only ice, and now there is a trickle. Now there is a thaw. 

Soon, there will be an entire
fucking
flood.

Little Boxes

You feel it stirring,
deep in the darkness,
behind your wasting appendix,
so light a tickle that you barely dare move for fear of scaring it away,
but you know what it means,
you know what it will try to tell you,
what it will tempt you to do, know
the rush in your chest when you succumb to it,
when you jump into the current, it's been
so many years of sitting on
dry land now my
dear, but
I think we are ready to crawl back out of this cave, are
ready to not only live again but
set the whole
damn
place on
fire.

Wane

A day passes in heavy returns, in questions the kind that refuse answer, in longings that may never let themselves be answered. His incessant questions run you out of excuses, and your parents call to ask you for advice in their fumbling choices. Should we pick up and move all over again?

But then the sun rises on Avenue B, and you wake with the remains of a night on the Bowery on your shoulders, you wake with the light of your dream apartment on your eyelids. I take a long walk along the river and see familiar faces, this little village in the sea of a metropolis. A florist opens a pop-up shop around the corner, something is bubbling in the new dawn. For a moment, all I feel is peace. 

The case to be made
for sticking around
is if you don't
You'll never know what dreams
may come.

In this World

Return to the city and find spring to be springing. Find your preferred bourbon in the bar cart, find the corners of your shoebox tighter than ever. He says, Why do you live here when you don’t have to? and you realize he’ll never understand the answer. You stop trying to make him. When I went to bed last night, I whispered hi into the bed sheets, it’s good to be home. 

There’s no way to put into words a 

peace like that. 

Gate A1

The airport is new,  gleaming full of potential, hopeful in its extended hand. Drop the rental car in a freezing parking lot, the long, dark drive through the canyon like a cleanse. You hate to leave, reluctant to any change, but the second you park at the gate, the calm settles, spreads through your bags and your fingertips. Soon 6th street will appear around the corner, familiar music in your ear, soon New York will nestle itself into your heart again and you will be powerless against it. A man sits laughing in Haitian French next to me, it's impossible not to feel light at heart. Soon you will be in Queens, there is no better way to return to the buzz. 

The sting of departure wanes, the impatient anticipation of arrival building itself in your belly. 

We do not know what is next
but for the first time since the plague arrived

you think you might like to find out.

Before You Left

You wake early, again, a body reluctant to miss even one sunrise, so few remain. The early morning is silent, still, a sky of pink and mountains of muted whites like they haven't found their focus yet. Rub your eyes in tandem to see the first rays of light slice the top of the ridge into sharp relief. 

Last night, out on the back porch, another communion with the stars. The silence so complete it made my ears ring, shadows of an owl in the air, hunting without a sound, and nothing. As it always does when  given space, the night painted a whole life in front of me, spun itself around choices and possibilities, reminders and remains. I saw so clearly that which gets muddled in the noise of reality. The answers were always in the desert, you've known it for years. 

The illness takes too long to leave your body, yes, but it will leave.
It will leave, and you will remain, and that is the point I'm trying to make, is
you remain

When the sunlight returns
You will be there to turn it
into gold.

I'll say it anyway

We broke up, he writes from across the valley, trembling feelers making their way across the snow. You sit in an empty house the size of a city block and try to gauge if there is space enough to fit him inside all the wine you've been drinking. But you are selfish with the starry sky, with the silence, reluctant to share it, to lose it.

that's all I wanted
something special, something sacred

you decide to stay still till it passes
hallucinate a yellow cab at the other end of the pasture
on the way home I saw two dead deer on the roadside and
stopped for two live ones on the highway

Life is more fleeting than you
comprehend. 

You think maybe tomorrow
you call him back.

Reunion

Another bright day in the desert, sunlight beaming across white fields, if ever there was a therapy against the darkness, surely it was this. They arrive at your doorstep with their piles of literary treasure, hours spent talking around the ideas that gleam inside your brains which no AI yet knows, how many miles have we covered together since our first? You try to retrace the steps, to recreate the tingle along your skin, but some magic seems determined to arrive only on its own accord. 

You determine to wait patiently until it does. 

The year looks new, still, in its cold midwinter sun, the potentials of spring decked with hope. We look at plane tickets and say maybe we go to Amsterdam instead, the words will allow themselves where you leave them room, you're a pile full of oysters, don't stop until you find
the pearl.

That Ship Sailed

Twilight over the Western Ridge, a whisp of winter shades, everything is opportunity. You build meals and visions all at once, lose track of time, empty the wine bottles, they ask when it's time for you to move back home and smile that sweet sunshine at your New York sentiments. The effect is jarring. 

A full moon climbs across the zenith, lighting the snow sea and rendering the dark night harmless. I sleep, and I sleep, and I sleep, strange dreams twisting my sheets until dawn. What did you come for?

Mountains beyond Mountains

The mountain silence closes in on you, shields you from all the noise outside the valley, you sleep till well after sunrise and wake to a blistering brightness on the hillside. Everything looks different this side of civilization, your words come out in new shapes, your tongue twisting around itself like it had discovered something in the wake of its own silence. You begin to believe again in poetry. 

I sat underneath the stars late last night, after all the work was done and there was nothing left to do but close the door on the day. The winter skies are different, softer somehow and perpetually bathed in a soft blue tint, with only the brightest stars showing. A bright moon whispered itself across the fields, sweeping shadows across the snow drifts. In the silence, a crack of broken snow crust - one lone deer making its way through the night. We stood listening to each other, wondering if we had anything to run from, but no answer came.

I walked back inside, slept the sleep of a thousand years. There's an answer here somewhere, I know it. An elusive directive from the stardust. 

Why else return to dig in the treasure chest
for decades
decades still?

Surf

Wake too early,  always too early, always another time zone stretching itself in my lungs and the day still dark outside the window. Go from palm trees and Pacific Ocean waves to billowing pillows of pristine white snow, it's like three years of missed travel condensed into a week of whiplash. The boy at the car rental agency calls you pretty and gives you a bigger car, you slip him a twenty but not your number, careen into the wintry canyon like an armored truck on a rampage. The slight hint of sunburn on your cheeks, a tote bag full of sand, all that remains from the west coast is little clues of its appearance, how fleeting each adventure. 

The words are too far away, you tread the same old waters, everything is mulch. But the sun rose over eastern mountains this morning, cavalcades of pinks and blues across drifts of pinks, it's another sunny day in the American West, the pearl is out here somewhere for the taking and soon, soon it will be time for you to reach for it again. 

Soon, soon, all the things hidden in snow
will thaw.