Memoriam

Return to the East Village on a sunny holiday afternoon, the streets full of parking spaces and the air full of summer. A new season is ushered in, a dawn of potential, you collapse on your couch and wonder what comes next. The to-do list runs rampant in your head. The coins in your piggy bank aren't adding up, but everything else sounds like freedom. She writes from packing boxes and panic, you do not speak her language. June sits on the horizon, everything sits on the horizon, this shoebox has been so full of questions, and now you start to see the answers it's been telling you all along. 

It is not perfect, all of this, but it is better than it has been in a very long time. 

You are happy to start here.
Keep walking until you see the sun rise.

Rash

He passes you on the 6th street foot bridge, a flash of a bright memory, the Universe winks at you in the most unexpected ways. You smile into the approaching storm clouds, make your way home to the piles of paper, the half drunk wine bottles, the post its that declare there is something left in life to discover. Fuck it, let's find out rings loud across your temples, everything feels like an old sweater you are ready to shed. 

New York, I think we need to take a break. I think I have to leave you to remember what it is to miss you. This shoebox was everything I had dreamed of, but all my dreams are of ferries and trains and going somewhere else now, I wake up in your arms and I feel nothing. New York, this doesn't mean it's over, I just need to stretch my legs, need to feel the grass under my bare feet to remember how much I love your electricity in my veins. 

New York, don't you see I'm doing this for us?

I've paced this block in circles so many times,
I'm leaving a scar in the concrete. 

We deserve better than these wounds we've given.

Classics

Dorothy lived in the midst of the great Kansas prairies, with Uncle Henry, who was a farmer, and Aunt Em, who was the farmer's wife. 

I stay up past my bedtimes, and nap in the afternoons. Everything is upside down, everything is silence. A change rests on the horizon, like a storm front still trying to make up its mind. You are like cracked earth desperate for rain. The typewriter beckons you like an old friend, like a limb you had somehow separated from, you wonder how you got by so long without it. You begin to create mental packing lists: bring all of the paper, the books from this shelf, bring these notebooks, these dumbbells, a coffee cup that might bring you just the right type of juju for the next Great American novel. 

Google fire lookout jobs. 

Whatever comes next - and you do not know yet what does - it feels like opportunity. It feels like being guided by curiosity, not fear, feels like a chance to rediscover parts of yourself that entirely fell away in the depths of the Darkness, it feels like hope.

After years of cracked earth,
the time has come to learn
again
how to grow.

If You Can

Everything catches up with you, eventually, grabs you when there is nowhere just to run, the shoebox full of walls. You think again of Big Sky, of neverending sunsets, you lose your patience, how the demons have all been waiting for your return. You thought you had answers, but looking around the little apartment, you feel as though you forgot even what the question was, see yourself stuck in the same old quicksand that robbed you of so many days. 

You feel like that feeling says something. 

But you are not yet sure what.
It's best not to burn everything to the ground
until you can hear it clearly.

Somewhere Only We Know

The bartender slides into your plastic lined booth, explains that the table will remain crooked in perpetuity and asks for your number. She says Flatbush is great, just don't cross the avenue and don't walk home at night. You create mental maps and network in new boroughs. It's only 30 minutes to Union Square, she continues, and you think that's what people say when they have to justify where they live. You look at a one bedroom in Red Hook and wonder how well "exotic" stacks up against "complicated". 

It's funny.
People have been making that exact calculation along your skin
for decades. 

But you never stuck around long enough
To know the answer that ended up
in their hands.

On

A plastic yellow toy truck lies upended in the river, making slow moves down the rapids, lodged at every turn in an obstacle along the way. Four black wheels stick up into the air. My shoulders ache from working on the farm, but it's not the ache of cramped New York City white collar work, not the ache of muscles held too tightly along with breath. I feel taller than I have in years. 

You check in for a flight back to reality. Feel your spine prepare for other wavelengths. Wonder if you'll remember the things you've learned. If you'll learn the things you've remembered. 

As you pack, a note falls out of your pocket. You turn it over in your hands, wonder the question it's asking. 

It says, Say yes when you are afraid to. 

But you are not sure you are afraid of anything, anymore.

Frei Tag

You wake with a start, sleeping synapses trying to collect themselves in the split of a second, remember where they are and what they're meant to be doing. Something about the dream chasing them into the sunrise. A few misty clouds linger on the mountaintops, but mostly the morning is still, peaceful, unhurried, the air heavy with the scent of lilacs. Lines of your heritage appear underneath your skin, like veins suddenly lifting themselves to the surface, showing you what there was no escaping. 

The mallards play in the rapids outside your window. 

He sends you music across the continent, washes the morning in fearless joy, you remember there is promise on the horizon, and while it will not arrive on its own, all you have to do

is walk towards it.

You Can Dance If You Want To

Spring arrives to the mountain, all rushing floods and bursting blooms. Your days end with flushed cheeks and tired limbs, but just as much the sense that time has no power over you, that the Darkness lost its way chasing you and gave it a rest. You decide to continue running for a while, decide that the Great Escape is allowed to be more fun than trauma, decide that you feel better than you have in years. 

The grass is green outside your window, the cows unhurried in their moves across the pasture. You take deep breaths into the quiet evening, revel in a moment before the whirlwind picks back up.

See a hundred mornings line up before you.

Realize you look forward to greeting each and every one.

Great Escape

A group of the cows escape, make their way toward the greener grass of untouched fields, ford the river at its narrow end, well versed in reading the waters, in calmly making their way to more abundant pastures. You think there's a life lesson in the way they move. Someone in upstate New York could charge thousands for the workshop. 

You think maybe not everything is about how much money you can squeeze out of something. 

A plan begins to arrange itself in your lungs. It sees the eons spread out before you, sees big sky and verdant fields, sees a mind moving like the cows on their great escape - unhurried, with short bursts of elated sprints, curiously following the next patch of grass in the morning sun. 

The cows dip their heads in the river, let the cold mountain water rush over their brows. Know only this moment, and maybe the next. 

Know everything they need,
to greet it.

Story

You stare at the starry sky for ages, breath held, silent. At last spring has arrived and the air is calm, mild, although it is too soon for the cicadas to puncture the silence with their static. The stars stretch across their dark canvas all the way down to invisible mountain ranges around you; you wait, impatiently, for one of them to break free from their pocket and burst in a fiery arc and extinguish. But none do. 

Instead, after so much silent waiting, a new thought appears in the back of your mind: a story, beginning in the pricks of light across the firmament, connecting itself like a game between the stars, weaving bits of mystery onto a blank canvas. You forget about the absence of the shooting stars, forgive the sky its unanswered prayers. 

Realize sometimes you get things you didn't know to ask for.

Wanderlust

He arrives in smiles, 28 years of friendship and you never tire of the easy way he bursts into your line of vision. Not five minutes later, you are deep in discussions of everything all at once, your literary dreams building trails into the air, his voice a guide through the jungle. The fire on the back deck brings more comfort than warmth but you wrap yourselves in more layers and determine to remain out in the open. 

They say with you application, send a 10-song playlist that describes you and you wonder if it's more therapy than arts residency, but you accept the terms and play the game. Remove Paul Simon, add in Regina Spektor, wonder if lyrics about failing mental health or a penchant for whisky automatically disqualifies you. Your red flags glitter in the afternoon sunlight. The road lies open at your feet. 

He asks, What's your plan, then?, and for the first time in years, you're delighted to not entirely know.

Chill

Spring is three weeks late this year, they apologize over a crackling phone line. You walk through the garden looking for signs of bloom, but all there is is an ocean of dandelions. Cover the fledgling sprouts with blankets. Light a fire at twilight and will yourself to sit in the chill. It will come, it always does, eventually. Find an apartment on tenth street and think maybe there are miracles to be had, yet. 

In a tired moment late in the afternoon, I sat staring into the sunlight, begging myself to be productive, but no work was to come. I waited a little longer, silent, and there it was: pulled out a pen and paper, wrote the story as it told itself to me, complete with curlicues and heartstrings stretching. We get in our own way so often, when actually everything we are hoping for is just looking for a quiet moment in which to appear. 

Everything magic has just been waiting, patient underneath the layer of snow you have carried these last years. Spring is on its way now, the thaw is beginning, when the ground is clear the magic will sprout, if you just wait a little longer, you'll find yourself again.

Traverse

Dark skies stretch from one mountain range to the next, pierced only by occasional headlights and the rushing sound of the spring flood. The stars like a blanket, quiet tonight, unassuming, and not a single one falls though I will them to. Eyes adjusting, the stillness of the stars give way to a myriad of traffic across the firmament: airplanes and satellites criss-crossing the dark sea, on their way to other destinations, other adventures. 

He writes and says he may have an assignment for you in Alaska, should you be so inclined, and you tell him that after June 30, you'll have nothing keeping you anywhere and your calendar is free. 

I came looking for meteoroids exploding into the atmosphere, but I was given a reminder that there are places to go, instead. 

Both burn,
but one lives to tell it.

of Wills

Mind empty, reminders of deadlines swirling around the periphery while all I want is to till the soil and wear out my limbs. What use is technology when the earth lies at your feet? What use is contributing to the onslaught of twisted information and empty emotions? When there is grass to be touched by bare feet, when there are mountains to climb and stories to tell? I am reminded of months spent in this desert, where only stories and earth mattered. He says If I keep working this much I can retire in a year and you think yes, but you forgot to stop along the way and look up. The dandelions are carpeting the fields. There's a truth hiding in the folds of that mountain at the edge of the valley.

The things that were to come are too fantastic not to tell.

Down the Road

The desert sun returns, your shoulders flush picking daffodils, race down the freeway into the valley like you're flying on clouds, everything is different now. He writes tentative questionmarks into the starry night but you're not looking for questionmarks, you're looking for firm handshakes and confident punctuation. In the rearview mirror, three years of dust dances, you know what it means. You have no time for kicking up anymore. 

I'm making up for lost time. If you want to get on board, now is the time to know what you're doing.

the Meters

You wake in a blissful daze, dawn spreading across the grassy fields like an expectant lover, running their fingertips over your clavicle. If I didn't think too hard about it, I could still feel his breath in my ear, could remember his weight against the small of my back, a brief linger in a hallway. There's a bruise where your hand used to be. 

The country is serene, the nights' silence punctured only by the rampant spring stream past the fence. I pick tender rhubarb fledglings, spend my days making pies, cooking, watering the plants, writing a few words. We walk along the side of the mountain and discuss life's questions like they are no longer impossible to answer, if only you don't look directly at them. One foot in front of the other, say yes now, and cross that bridge when you get there. She laughs into the sunset. You think of the piercing blue of his eyes and wonder what yes looks like on this side of the tracks. 

you make a note
to find out.

Rocky Mountains

There will be some turbulence, the pilot's crackling voice says over the PA. For those of you who travel this route a lot, you know this is what happens when you cross the Rockies. I draw myself out of my sleep deprived revelry to look out over barren lowlands and snowy cap. I have traveled this route a lot. I'm prepping sandwiches and seltzers and will meet you at arrivals, she buzzes into your phone, a geographic shift in reunions but somehow the most right kind of all. An adventure begins, it starts now, it spreads out across the year and tells you to expect the unexpected, how could this encounter not be a wink from the Universe about stardust to come? I am ready now, I whisper into the mountains, as they wriggle thousands of feet beneath us. Flight attendants, please prepare for arrival. 

It's as good a sign as any. 

Re: Boot

You sound good, she says, enjoy it while it lasts. You look at her with question marks for eyes, does she not see how the whole world is painted in a different palette, does she not know everything is different now? She writes you another prescription and you weigh it against the sunlight at your fingertips. Think, we're all just trying to make it through. 

A month ago, you could not stand without the greates effort, and here you are, planning adventures in the sky. She says, we know these things come back, and she doesn't have to tell me, doesn't have to explain my own innards to my poorly assemble psyche, who else has lived through these ebbs and flows but me? It doesn't matter. 

I walk back out into the street, feel New York pulse underneath me like a perpetual seismic shift, and at last I feel ready again to roll with its moves, at last we are back in step. The trees are green in Madison Square Park, my eyes smile when I see them in the mirror, I have a long way yet to climb out of this ravine, but, oy, at last I see the blue skies I am trying
to reach.

Obscure

The morning is easy, a comfortable transition of puttering and planning, too much rain for a walk but just the right amount for wistful wanderings, you find the work made light and try to remember why it was such a struggle before. It turns out a house in ruins was not your inevitable state, turns out a mind in shambles was not a sign of your own failings, you feel like the devil tricked you again even when you were supposed to know better. 

But the point is, none of the shambles matter once you are out of the woods. None of the smoking ruins, the scorched earth, the years lost to darkness. The point is, the joke's on the devil, because while he remains singed in the canopy, you've found the path again, and you
are walking away.

May day

A new month awakens, leaves april showers behind, makes mole hills out of your mountains, was it always this easy to breathe? After all your attempts, it turns out there wasn't a trick to it at all but letting the smoke clear from the forest fire. Every step you take around the apartment is a careful consideration of what's at your fingertips: do I keep this coaster, when I move? Your landlord scoffs at your negotiations, Alphabet City quakes underneath the soles of your feet and you are unafraid. After all, does not the road lie beneath it? You consider how much can fit in a duffel, only to find that a neighbor is gifting one. The road winks at you, and your knees grow weak. A new story writes itself at your fingertips. 

It's wondrous how emerging out of illness
feels so much like being born anew.