Turnpike

By the time we make our way out the Holland Tunnel, it has begun to drizzle: New Jersey's finest. You approach the destination in a sort of breathless anticipation, unsure of if there's anything to worry about. Usually all that needs worrying about is you. 

By the end of the night - hurrying home to walk the dog - you are more questions than answers, although with more answers than you had before leaving the island. Some people move in on you like snow melt: slowly, thoroughly, delightfully, even before you were aware you were thawing. You decide maybe you can carry the questions with you for a while, yet. Later, in the witching hour, you lie awake and listen to the steady breaths of Chelsea walkups, to the unsteady breaths of your own wary insides. Maybe I can carry the questions with me for a while, yet, you repeat to yourself. 

The sleep that follows is the best you've had in weeks.

Act

When you wake, the illness has passed from your brow, the morning reminds itself as a weekday. Your dreams were too kind to wake from, you ask for them back, but no one answers. The dog jumps around you until you feed her, then promptly settles in in the warm spot on the bed that you left behind. You cannot blame her. These in-between days are a strange limbo, a mountain of possibilities, a chance to erase what's been and start over. 

You wonder if you'd like to start over.

Site

A fever appears across your shoulder. You vow to sweat it out. 

You bring out leftovers from a feast, the dog an inch from your hand at any moment. She was taken off the Puerto Rican streets, she was taken from a life of hunger and dog fights and now she walks out of her way to avoid purebreds in the streets, now she sits an inch away from my hand, her whole body quivering, hoping for morsels even though she just was fed.

Suddenly it's clear as day, how scarcity sits in one's bones, like the body can grow but the vast emptiness inside does not shrink in proportion, it eats up the insides and reminds itself at every turn. You were raised hungry, you remain hungry. 

I speak to her in soft tones as I feed her bits of meatball, pears, egg, I say When will you learn that you aren't living on the streets, when will you learn that you are safe now, that you will get all the food you need? and the words are scarcely out of my mouth before realize I am saying it to myself. 

When will you learn that you have made it out of the woods,
that you have rowed your boat to shore?

When will you believe that you are safe?

Day

For an entire Christmas Eve, you sleep. The dog is delighted, she buries her body in the blankets along your side, nuzzles her little nose into the crook of your arm. Your breaths rattle, but your chest is full of warmth. When you wake up on Christmas morning, isn't your head a little lighter?

With rest, you start to remember the stories from which you've hidden, the plans which so so loved to feel in your blood stream. The end of the year draws nigh, a new one readies its lungs for deeps breaths and big steps. 

Where will you go when it arrives?

Who will you be when the questions are asked of you?

Rest

He says, this is just what I wanted for Christmas, like you appeared on the back of a sleigh, wrapped in ribbons. You make a note to ask the Universe what it means by this ease, I turned over a tails up penny in the street the other day and it’s still there waiting every day when I walk by now, why is no one taking the luck when it’s given so readily. 

Christmas waits in the wings, rest waits in the wings, you have worked so hard to get not where you’re going but to all the places you’ll go. Now, for a minute, you may rest on your laurels.

Now, says the Universe, you may get what’s been yours to come. 

Den of Thieves

Winter floods in through the open window, you forgot to close it after he walked out the door, forgot to warm yourself when your skin was left bare, you walk the dog along the river and she sleeps for the rest of the morning, it is winter. 

Somewhere, bits of poetry lie floating in your inseam, somewhere the magic of a holiday season streams past your subconscious, somewhere there is music if only you had the time to grab it, if only you had the wits to unearth yourself above the surface of an oil slick on the ocean. Time is running out, the white rabbit says, what will you make of what little you have? The dog looks at you like she hasn't been fed in months, like she hasn't seen the light of day and you think, same, and take you both out for another walk. 

You don't have to have the answers yet. 

You only have to keep walking towards them.

That's All I Wanted

Return to the apartment on 46th street, see it now like a hotel room with your things in it. Nothing looks like anything, and the space feels like a cubicle without life. On 22nd street, the buildings are low, the bricks have a comforting song to them, you take the long way round with the dog, she is thrilled. There's a Christmas tree in the apartment, an open bottle of red in the kitchen, your limbs are tired but your mind is full of joy, how can you possibly be sad about this. 

Only a few days left to soak up the season. You are always a step behind, every year a step behind. You vow to spend the week a step ahead. 

Vow to be better than you were the day before.

La Lucha

You tumble out of Grand Central Station, the afternoon sun streaming at the far end of Lexington Avenue, New York forever welcoming you home like nothing has changed, like you haven't changed, even though every time you return to the little island everything is different. 

I take the most important parts from the midtown apartment, turn off the lights, and head downtown. Chelsea lies like a promise to the south, with its low skyline and old buildings, with the little dog waiting by the door. Your muscles ache in that way that reminds you only of questions answered, of new ones placed in your lap. Futures look different when someone else paints them, you try them on for size and find that you like the lilt on your tongue. 

The road hasn't been conquered yet, but neither have you. You tear the pages from your calendar and watch them float away. New York will welcome you home whenever you show up, in whatever way you arrive on its shores.

Hudson Line

Scramble with the last of the things, check for errant chargers and turn the oven off (did you turn the oven off?), you live next door to Grand Central now, so the transit time isn't long. You turn off the last light switch, call for the elevator, and make your way down Lexington Avenue, seventeen years you've been making your way along Lexington Avenue, it never ceases to remind itself to you.

The express train waits at the far end of the concourse, you cross the large train station with its histories, with its stories, you rush though you are not in a hurry, upend yourself in a seat on the Hudson side of the car, tell him you made it, tell him you're making it, tell him though the days are short, the life is long and to wait for you in Poughkeepsie. 

Everything that has yet to come
will come. 

Don't say your goodbyes,
say your I love yous.

and a Clock Still Strikes

Some days aren't yours at all. 

I race downtown in the freezing afternoon, sunlight like a long-lost relative I didn't remember I missed. My skin freezes but my chest radiates, New York was always a city on the move, the still midtown days erase this knowledge from my blood. Perpetually late, I hop on a bike in Chelsea and speed east, to the comforts of familiar corners. There is much left to do, of course, always so much left to do, how do I never catch up to the Red Queen, only see her coattails disappear around the bends. 

Anyway, all I wanted to say was I haven't forgotten the promises I made you. I haven't lost the shooting stars you gave me or the trail of pennies you left to light my path. I know some days it seems like I've been devoured by the grid again, that all my days are naught but to-lists, but you forget.

The Universe can fit in a single silent moment,
a lifetime of a cosmos in a single breath.

Time

You lose track again, you falter and fall, feel a hundred miles behind, but when at last you get to sit down and write, it's like the weight of the world falls off your hips, you are light as a feather, you are fine.

She writes to say his best friend died, and the way your little east village family rallies could warm the coldest of hearts. You tell him you will plant yourself at the usual bar, will be there from open to close, and whatever he might need from that space will be there waiting for him. Yeah maybe one drink would be good, he says.

I whispered words into the rain last night that I hadn't heard myself say in so long. Let my heart beat to a rhythm so long missing that it felt rusty at the return, and I stumbled as it skipped a few beats. I don't know yet if these castles in the sky are built of brick or just the lightest of clouds, but perhaps I don't have to know yet. 

Perhaps grace is the space we allow ourselves for not knowing. Perhaps grace is sitting at the regular bar from open to close and whenever we are ready for a drink, there is someone there to drink it with.

Race

The days are supposed to be quiet, but they are not. They are supposed to give you space to breathe, and weave, and twirl into the ether, but they do not, and you do not know how to make them. You're certain there's a trick somewhere, certain you read an instruction manual with the right steps to take but you cannot remember where you saw it now, and the places you've been are so far behind there's no way to reach back and grab it. 

You book a bus ticket, pack a day bag, pack a word of wisdom, wonder what comes next. Adrenaline runs through your veins like bolts of lightning. You know there's a way to lasso it for your own bidding, but now you are just being dragged along. 

All in due time.
All in due time.

Scratcher

You walk into the bar early, Monday afternoon and only a few scattered patrons chatting quietly at the tables. Your regular bartender is back after summer, you're back after summer, New York remains as ever, reliable. He gave the cats away, he did a two week stint at a Frank Sinatra show in Ocean City, you tell him of the Road, he looks tired, did the city break him so soon, did Broadway not shine so bright in the rearview mirror, you want to tell him that everything is his for the taking, want to tell him that if you can live in a Midtown darkness without an address to your name then he can carry on without the cats, that New York has so much more to offer and when the seasoned bartender shows up and breaks into a beaming smile upon seeing you, you want to tell New York that it is everything that was ever good in your life, that anything you dared to do came from living on these streets and when the night at last is over and you pack up and go home, you miss your stumbling walk down sixth street but at least you are here, at least you are here, and it mended every broken bone in your soul,
you are not sorry. 

Some days your cup is filled
with more than it could ever hold;
and those days are worth
all the rest.

Some kind of Way

A week ends, a month end, you wash up on shore like a wet rag all wrung out, but also like you haven’t seen sunlight in months and now it’s beaming down on you: your tired soon dissipates. Take the bus out to a rainy Brooklyn, dig into a storage unit full of pieces revealing who you’ve been before. You wonder how much of this you could burn. 

Wonder what a home is, if you were to truly define it. 

He says he’ll pick you and your unearthed treasures up, take you all out to lunch, take you safely back to your midtown home, says it like it’s nothing, like it just makes sense and you think maybe it does. 

On the car in front of the bus, a Christmas tree lies tied to the roof. You think, that’s alright then.