Rasa Vinter

A holiday arrives, tears at your heritage, sings of flowering forest floors, of babbling brooks and how the medieval heroines of your childhood just had to shout in spring. Somehow you made it to May, but it's more than that. Somehow you made it out of the woods, you start to believe it now. Start to look at the piles of paper around you and think, it's time to do something about this. There was a time you believed in life, and maybe, just maybe, you do again. 

It's hard to know where to start when you've burned everything to the ground. 

Sometimes just standing still and watching the smoke clear
is good enough.

Post It

A writing day comes and goes in oblivion. By nightfall, you sit with shreds of words strewn about you and wonder how you can squander your gifts like this. In the depths of your chest, in that little hollow that always fears until filled, a new character stretches her limbs and looks around. The trees begin to grow around her, the promise of adventure aroud the corner, and as the story twists and turns in the tiniest curls along your rib cage, you begin to sense again the awe of discovery. It's buried deep, so deep in your lungs it's like you'd forgotten how to breathe but there it is, just a tiny morsel of a story, but there, indubitably there. 

You close the books on the squandered day. Think maybe morsels can build mountains, too.

Serotonine

Is this what it is like to be happy?

You find yourself asking the question into the peaceful space after a run, into the peaceful space of budding leaves on the trees outside my window, into the peaceful space of a soul at ease. Do people just live like this? It seems impossible. 

And yet, at the very bottom of the well from which you scoop there is the sense that you, too, have lived like this. At the very ends of your muscle memory sits the tiniest tingle that you know these steps, that you remember what it is to get out of bed, do the things that you intended, walk back straight, eyes clear, believe in tomorrow, what it is to look at the next 40 years and not think how am I supposed to endure all of that?

You take cautious steps into the street, feel Avenue B stretch its limbs into the late spring, smell lilacs from the 6B garden on the breeze, you count the light days like you used to count twenty-dollar bills in your sock drawer, let your lungs expand in security, a new book creates itself under your broken wings, the writing bar is mellow on Mondays, there was a time when you thought how am I supposed to endure all of that?

but that time is not today. 

Today I just live like this
and save it in the sock drawer.

The Space In-Between

Well how much do you want to pay? the landlord writes back, desperately weary on his high horse. He holds all the cards except the one of convenience, and stumbles when he realizes you are impervious to its supposed safety. He doesn't know you were raised in a moving vehicle, doesn't know you've never truly leaned on the comfort of a house key, they beat it out of you years ago and now you sleep as well on the mattresses of strangers. At some point you still need to make decisions. At some point you still need to craft answers out of the whims of your subconscious. 

But for the first time in years,
you are ready for answers
that feel like fun.

Tip. Toe.

The monster curls its tail and retreats, you try to remember if this is what it feels like to return to the living, if this is how it used to be when you breathed all on your own, but it's too long ago now, you don't dare believe the lightness in your lungs, the ease of your smile. Are we out of the woods? It seems too good to be true. You go to the Monday bar on a Tuesday, stare at the patrons because they are not the same, like taking a later train on your morning commute and finding your regulars replaced by aliens. 

You look at apartment listings and wonder who you'd be in Flatbush. Somehow nothing scares you now like it used to. Somehow you dug your nails into New York, and it will never be rid of you completely, its grime coursing through your veins now, you are impervious to its abandonment. The bartender says if he gets re-elected I may go back home, but you both know the words are empty, this is home, it's too hard to explain to people who have never breathed it. You both stuck it out at this little bar on 5th street, you both waded through eons of New York to get to this point and remain, it's only life if you refuse to see its magic. 

When you are ready for it, the fear is rendered mute.
The Universe rewards those who keep going.

Peak Bloom

You don't understand the mechanics, the blueprint slips out of your line of vision, all you know is you wake up not just alive but living. The river is a cacophony of florals, you bathe in joy at the assault. Your accountant says You don't make any money though, and the spreadsheets ask incredulous questions about how you're paying the rent, but all you can think of is finding that map of highways across America, all you can think of is how you were raised in a suitcase, none of this scares you because if it looks like freedom and walks like freedom, you may find it will taste like freedom when it reaches your tongue. 

You fear speaking too soon, you fear you are not well and truly out of the dark, you knock on wood a hundred times over, but oh, oh, how sweet the scent of cherry blossoms when you haven't seen color in years, how deep the sleep when you trust you may wake in sunlight. 

Start there.
Keep going.

Returns

It’s that the scents have returned. As though you were stumbling blindly in a world without color, trying to feign a life when none existed in your vacuum, and suddenly they turned the lights back on. The smoke of grilled meats float in through the window, your morning walks a discovery of florals, identifying passersby in the street based on their most human essence. You think maybe you are alive again. 

I take my headphones off along the river. Hear the steps of runners, the williamsburg ferries, the birdsong, the FDR waking. Make notes on my phone about new stories as they appear to me, parked on a park bench and open to the whims if the universe again. Always keep a notebook in your back pocket, you hear, and for the first time in a long time, 

You remember why. 

But Soft

Treading the narrow strip of light in the doorway is a circus act, is at both times terrifying and exhilarating. You think maybe, maybe, you are getting out of here alive, nearly intact, think maybe it really was illness not your own hopelessness that painted the world in such drab colors. You think maybe when I wake up tomorrow this reprieve will be over. You avoid telling people for fear it will dissipate. 

But I woke before dawn this morning, ecstasy coursing through my veins, I wanted not to sleep but to hold my eyes wide open, I wanted not to die but to do all the things opposite of that, only one of which is so simplistic as to live. The trees outside my window are knobby with emerging buds, they twist and stretch by the minute, the streets breathe, the air carries new scents, the future - the future! - unfurls and explodes in instances of fireworks, I wake up in a house full of ashes, yes, 

but all the better to rise from,
my dear.

Literally Do the Minimum

All the words come out trite, tired, come out jumbled without explaining what they're really trying to say, I get drunk off pilsners at the writing bar, I remember school buses in the desert, think, there is an answer in the Star Trail, but there are answers in the East River too, don't pretend your best poetry doesn't come out of dirt. 2023 dances like an unknown around your temples, how long you've been wading around in the liminal space without remembering what life is. Your therapist warns you of mania, but she doesn't know. She hasn't felt the fire, how it feeds you, how three years of death doesn't discriminate against joy even if it comes with a mental illness on its tail. 

We're all mad here. 

A tourist couple sits next to you, counts how many minutes it takes to reach Veselka, how far to the community gardens, they have proper books still and you adore their innocence. Do you think she can make a Long Island Iced Tea, he says, that's my favorite drink. Your regular bartender is out, a familiar face you've seen since you first came here greets you, says I'm just filling in. You wonder what she'd say if asked to make a Long Island iced tea. New York is a joy and a gift when you remember to hear it. 

I'm remembering to hear it.

I only forgot for a minute. I only forgot because the voice inside grew too quiet, the world outside too loud. I only forgot because I was swirling the bottom of the rock, but I was never going to stay down there
forever.

(fumbling)

(the morning after
finding the door
is overwhelming: 

sunlight sharper,
colors brighter,
you want to smile at strangers in the street

want to tell them
secrets about life
and that the point is always to 

live it

New York looks different
on your morning walk,
a lover the day after the fight

you look different, too,
the ghost of so many years
turned to flesh, and bone, and light the kind

that could bring ships home.

Tread softly,
fumble toward the exit,
Joy can look so much like relief

when you thought you might never find it
again.)

Write

Another day under the covers, another day of hollow, of filling the silence with vices, I have banged my head against the stubborn scar tissue of this illness so many times I no longer remember what I am fighting so hard for. What life is this, to live?

 But come evening, come sifting through piles of papers years in the making to find a map, and everything grows quiet. Old words, from a version of yourself you had forgotten existed, insights into emerging from illness, instructions for walking forward, fall from the pages in your hands. Tiny sparks in the synapses of your withering memories. You made the choices for a reason. A heart brimming with New York, with words unending, a reminder of madness and all the things that brought you here begin to fill empty space inside your rib cage, begins to hum along your eyelids. 

The answer was never going to be found in another miracle routine and better hair products. You were looking for a map, 

and you found it.

Revolutionary

The truth is we just want something different, she says on the screen, while you swallow another mouthful of bourbon, another mouthful of tears, while you, attempt to avoid scoring new gashes into your pale winter skin.

You fail, and fail, and
fail. 

He sends apartment listings for Mexico City, feigns brighter futures, you wish your rotted mind remembered how to believe in blue skies painted across your eyelids but all you have is disease. Repot the plants on the windowsill, spend a whole day sleeping.

It turns out you can bleed
without the bed sheets turning
red.

Bud

Rainy mornings, clouds like a lid on the world, streets empty in silent anticipation. There's a short window in which to gather your thoughts, watch the cherry blossoms wriggle their way into existence. He asks are you coming out West? and you try again to remember what it is to see a future on the horizon. The life spirals so slowly towards its seemingly inevitable hellfire, you think perhaps you could just step off and wonder why you don't. 

But at the back of your spine, near the darkest depths of your rib cage, the tiniest glimmer of gold dust stirs itself into existence again. It whispers of fantastical dreams and a life spent in wonder. It reminds you of deep breaths in your lungs and breaths held in anticipation. Reminds you that along the star trail of darkness lies also bursts of light. 

It's been so long now since anything appeared bathed in hope, you almost forget to turn it over in your hands when it does. The gold dust twists itself into a little whirl in your chest, tries to catch the morsels of starlight when it reaches the depths. 

Tries to turn itself
into a whole damn storm.

and Up

How a life tricks and trots underneath the soles of your feet, impossible to keep up and stay standing, but what can you do besidest try. I take a long run along the river to try to excise the demons from within and am surprised when it turns out to work. My muscles are too tired to think, the demons curl up in dusty corners and haven't even the energy to build shame about them. I think there was a time when I expected more out of life, when I thought there might be fireworks, or time well spent, but instead it looks an awful lot like all the things I meant to escape, only with louder streets and crooked flooring. 

A life runs away underneath me, yells and whispers into alternate ears. Sometimes I think I am escaping the Darkness. 

I hold on to those moments, try to piece together a puzzle in which a different life may appear. One where I open my mouth and air reaches my lungs. One where the sun rises on the inside of my eyelids just as well as out. It seems there was such a life once. Sometimes I think I find it again. 

Sometimes I think I can keep my feet on the ground.

Crackle

One step forward,
two steps back. 

You feign healing before the fracture has even begun to fuse. Crude stitches in your skin whisper of attempts to put yourself together, people love a fixer-upper, people love a DIY success story, people love the scars but hate to see the blood, wild is only fun in theory, no one likes a to do list that says try not to lie in bed until the sun sets. People love a scar that accentuates a secret genuis. 

But these scars are a road map through the darkness, a star trail of nights that refuse to end, these scars are wounds that haven't stopped bleeding, and if you come too close now these wounds will be the ones in which
you drown.

Out, Damn Spot

April arrives relentless, a whirl of sunshine and icy winds, of sleeveless tops and hordes running along the river, you are not ready. 19 years it’s been now, the day still aches in you like an old fracture that moans when it rains. I walk along the river with the ache just behind my eyes and wonder what would happen if I just jumped in. Sit later on a park bench crying, trying to pick a spot that won’t interfere with the revelry of others. 

There was a time when you believed

in change

When you believed that you would one day yet again find joy in something. 

It gets hard to paint fantasies when your memories have been reduced to aches.