Mayed

The month ends, you miss it already. Try to retain the forward motion, go through your closet, willing to burn it all. Summer races across the plains, you know how it goes, how sunshine extinguishes like a match, but you are just at the beginning now and everything tastes delicious. 

In 43 years you have not learned how to make the most of every moment, you have tried forever to savor the summer days as they pass but you reach every fall with a twinge of regret. 

 Perhaps that is the life lesson. Run, run as fast as you can, you can't catch ephemera. 

It doesn't mean you shouldn't drink as much sunshine as you can, 
while you're trying. 

Art (Bar)

Friday arrives like a gift, I wake at dawn and am not mad. Last night's miles linger in my muscles, last night's creative output like a badge of validation on my breast. You were never meant to write in the mornings, Bukowski could've told you that decades ago. But you didn't need to hear it then, you knew all about it then, it's only in your old adult age that you've tried to join the throngs – what for?! what good did the throngs ever accomplish?! – like you made a deal with the devil but came up short. Grasp all, lose all, said the dog without his bone. 

Writing was made for nights, Fridays were meant for tumbling into the Village and dragging yourself to a decrepit old bar that charges 90s prices for cheap bottles of bubbly. May goes out like a lion, out like a buttercup, spring dances like it hasn't a care in the world, what care could you have when you are spring? The peonies along the bay are over already, tumbled to the ground, but just as bright, just as joyful, just as unafraid. 

May is mighty, now, unstoppable. 

You can be, too. 

Heritage

They drag me back to the keyboard, a strange sense of loyalty, of promises made, I find piles of old words and realize that they still have the power to move me. What gives?

Perhaps you should let the words take the reins for a while. The pursuit of money isn't getting you anywhere, anyway. Perhaps just be a roaming poet, a silly soul lost to the wind, what harm has ever come to you from daydreaming, that has not been wrought times a hundred by the real world? There was a time when you thought New York City was a magic, and you've let them beat it out of you with a thousand pin pricks, this is not making good on your promises. 

May has been gray this year, has been hesitant and middle-aged and bored. But I found a four-leaf clover in the park this morning, avoiding the eyes of the local roaming tramp I looked down to find a small firework from the Universe, what do you make of that? 

You have to go looking for treasure to find it. 

You have to be ready for madness
for it to enter your heart.  

But Soft

How the days tumble ahead of themselves, May racing to the end of its short life, a brilliant flame extinguished too soon, you already long for it though it is still here. What can you make of your own wild tendrils before they crumple? The ideas are staggering and frail all at once. It is light out so late in the evenings, now, this is the reward for not dying, this is the treasure you reap when you do not go down with the Kraken. It seems impossible to forget yet in the midst of things, how the memory washes away with the tide. 

All you need to do is savor it,
you know. 

All you need to do is
be here now,

to honor the summer
you've been given.

Overcast

The cloud cover remains. End of May and a chill on your nose, you wonder how people live without considering the weather. It determines your every mood, your every move, so natural that you can't imagine wishing it different. It would be like wishing to not have to breathe. 

I looked for four-leaf clovers in the grass this morning. It was the first time in so long, I have forgotten what it feels like to tingle in anticipation. To feel a small spark of just joy, nothing more or less complicated. There's nothing at stake, nothing to win or lose, just a wink from the Universe, just a moment of feeling singular. I found nothing, of course, and the cloud cover remains. 

Sometimes we have to create a foe,
to remember we have something to fight for.

Poke

He slips and falls into your inbox like a cat caught pushing flowers off a counter: everyone sees the broken glass, but the guilt hangs unclaimed in the air above. Did you mean to wake the sleeping bear? is a question you're not sure you want answered, so you tuck it away and put on another sweater to ward off the cold May bluster outside. He belongs to a different season all together, and you're not sure you speak a common language anymore. You were never good at goodbyes, yet you perpetuate them into eternity. 

Always one foot out the door.

She writes from her Brooklyn sublet, packed up and ready to depart again. There's something so satisfying about winding down a stay, isn't there? she preaches to your choir, and you itch to wipe your slate clean, restore this railroad apartment to who it was before you piled your hopes and dreams on its shelves, pack only words into your station wagon and head off to new adventure. 

One foot out the door means you always have one foot stepping into another. 

For every goodbye, there's a promise of hello.

Wistful Thinking

Everything catches up with you eventually. You get a few days of blissful ease, of ignoring your ps and qs, but eventually you fall off the wagon if you don't keep holding on. In the light of spring, however, falling feels more like a jolt from a strange dream than a crushing defeat of the body. You dust yourself off, begin to sprint, catch up with the horse and get back up on it. 

You were raised to believe that routine would kill you, that anything reliable, predictable, would drown your lungs and tie you down. How long it took to learn that some routines can come with you where you go, that reliable is a state you can create within yourself. 

How long it took you to learn
that even freedom is a habit.

Binaural

A coastal wind sweeps in over your marine village, you bask in a sunlight that doesn't seem intent on turning you into a glob of jelly in the streets. Take the ferry to Wall Street and arrive with your hair in a whirl, you refuse to complain. I waited a whole winter for this moment, and it's just as sweet as I could have dreamed, if I had known how to dream in the midst of the dark. 

There isn't much to say in the swirl of a May leap ahead, you try to hold on andgo where it goes, your to do lists flying out of the open windows. Seize this ray of light, make hay of this chance at life that arrived on your doorstep. Let's not quarrel now, my love, let's not think of the missed connections and fumbled advances, we are here now, my love, let's pretend we never have to be anywhere else. 

May is the flowers a lover brings you to apologize for the fight, is the encouraging gaze of a parent coaxing a child's first steps, May is the gift the Universe gives us, a chance to prove our worth. 

We are here now, my love,
and that is plenty.

Gale

Monday morning wakes you bright, though your late night body and wine-soaked brain feel anything but. Step ut into a morning walk painted in bluster, how a small hook of Brooklyn can feel like the Maine coastline when it puts its mind to it. You try to remember the dread that coated you on these walks mere weeks ago and cannot access the feeling. This is the great gift of remission: amnesia.

There is nothing but life, now, nothing but potential and open doors. The choices that seemed so hard before seem like treasure now: how many different enticing options lie at your feet? New York City is a blustery whirlwind of sunshine, a network of blood vessels, coursing through the world. You sprang into life with a dream once, and you're hobbling out of the woods to find the dream hasn't died, what more could you ask for? Summer lies ahead, the world lies ahead, and all you have to do is everything. 

The possibilities for joy
are endless.

Front

Every time you think the skies begin to clear, a vengeful weather god snickers and sends a storm your way. There is no metaphor; it is thunder. You think to yourself how a few months ago, the sentiment would be reversed, how in illness you go looking for signs from the Universe, meaning in crystals, answers at the end of hypnosis, and now how easy it is to see the world for what it is. If you were never ill, you might not have had this imagination at all. 

If you were never ill, these stories might not have told themselves to you like they do, appearing like little gems in your periphery, creating worlds for you to step into and for just a moment forget the one in which your body is wasting away. 

Without this illness, would rain only ever be rain,
and never a whisper of magic?

Summer Skin

It stirs in you now, a process that cannot be stopped, a sprout emerging from the earth and unable to contain itself. I wake with a deep breath in my lung, I smile at strangers in the street, this morning I remembered, for a moment, what longing feels like and it jolted me like a burst of electricity. Do you remember how it felt to want to touch another person's lips so much that you thought you may explode?

May gasps with that feeling, out of breath with anticipation. Everything is about to start, everything is about to happen. 

For so many endless days I thought I didn't know what it was to want anything anymore, I didn't even have it in me to want to die. It's a strange illness, how it strangles your memory of who you are and why you are here. And when the illness recedes, and your self moves its jumble of suitcases and frantically packed plastic bags back into your chest, how clear it all is. 

You were there all along. 

This skin always fit you best.

Ends

She returns to the airport, bags full, heart kneaded. You drop her off and collapse on the couch, watching the hours while away but not unhappy about it. Sometimes we need to sit in silence to hear the things we said. 

The rain continued unabated the whole day, seemingly in agreement. Red Hook comes out of its shell, prepares for its season in the sun. You find homes on other shores. May itches in you like a seasonal allergy, a chronic condition you're in no rush to kick. 

I remember what it was like to want to kiss you. 

But not more than I remember how it feels
to have the road underneath your feet.

Screen

The rain hangs over the city like a threat that cannot quite commit. You get a reservation to an impossible restaurant, the last few hours trickle away and you wonder if you made the most of it, if you let something precious slip away. There was a time in this city when you thought maybe you could have everything, and the loss claws at your insides, but everything circles back when you live at the center of gravity. Good things are coming back. 

You will be ready when they do.

Forget-Me-Not

You hit the FDR at the very beginning inklings of rush hour traffic, a slow meander up the East River, a burgeoning irritation, a two-mile-an-hour crawl through the Bronx, but once you hit the Taconic, it's all winding roads and happy dances until cocktail hour. The dog greets you, their smiles greet you, the upstate is rainy and cold but yawns itself into sunshine by morning. You walk around barefoot, trying to grasp if grass under the soles of your feet can set something straight which has been crooked. 

There's a quiet peace which settles when you are out of your illnesses. A gentle acceptance and ability to breathe through the neighborhoods, a lightness. You wonder if people live their entire lives like this, but it's best not to think of it too long. A chef in Cold Spring says come stay for the month in August, and you start to pack your bags at the drop of a dime. 

Returning from illness is a reminder of all the things you could have been doing but haven't. It carries also the seed that there is time yet to do them. This is grace. 

The rest, it turns out, is up to you.

Of the Lights

You wake early, again, again, your spirit light, your mornings an exercise in hope. Get more done before nine than January you did in a day. You do not resent her, do not consider yourself above. There's a magnanimity that appears when your disease wastes away, a generosity of the heart that you miss when it is gone.You know the illness is a part of you, but this, this sunshine soul,feels like stepping into.a box that was tailor-made to fit your shape. This feels like everything aligned just so, stacking the rings of your wind pipe so that you can breathe again, as if for the first time in months. 

You waste no time in catching yourself up.  

New York beckons outside your window, summer beckons outside your window, at JFK airport a gate prepares to deliver your most precious cargo, I'm saving you a seat at our favorite restaurant, you know the one in the West Village with the tables squeezed so tightly together you weave your stories into the ones of the couple next to you, I''ll ask them to chill the wine for you, I'll ask them to make room for any tales you want to tell. Summer is ours now, New York and life. I took so long to get here I nearly forgot the way.

But all roads lead home,
if you let them.

Stars

The rain does one last lap around the bay, hides the highrises from the world in a drape of gray stuffing, washes the dusky streets in a cold wind. By morning, it's all gone. Blue sky the kind that pierces your eye, sunlight kissing your skin, the hope of the world again. The hours while away and you don't know how it happens, but you no longer have access to the darkness that would have you worry about it. 

The space it left behind has been filled with lilac scent and whimsy. 

I stuff my bags full, laugh as it spills over onto to the streets, into the arms of people I meet, over the words and creations I try so hard to bring to life. Little darling, it's been a long, cold, lonely winter. 

But you are here now,
and that has made all
the difference.

Space

The rain lingers, cools the air to a chill, hampers your forward motion and you don't know which direction to aim it now. Work simmers around you like an ocean full of crabs, you are reluctant to go in even though you know you can swim once you commit. The itch to write reappears along the inside of your skin, all it took was a whiff of smelling salts to emerge from its hibernation, all it needed was one long evening with no sunset. She packs her bags, prepares arrival. You cannot step in the same river twice, and this town has molted a thousand times since last she saw it, but no matter. 

The butterfly always carries a part of its caterpillar life into its new reality, despite the metamorphosis, despite the turned page and new eyes. 

Even when nothing about it looks the same, 
it turns out, 

the memories remain.

Queen Mary 2

Trudge to the bathroom in the early morning, eyes grumbled and vision short, come out to realize a giant cruise ship fills the whole kithen window. A Monday morning cruise ship, all off schedule, everything is Wacky Wednesday, you revel in recognition, in how much you loved whimsy in your youth. How do we reclaim such joy in our adult years? 

Emerging from the depths to remember what it is to want to feel joy is a gift, when you've spent so many months forgetting. You reapply your lipstick, feel the color return to your cheeks. What harm can rain do, when you can create light on your own. The little girl waits at the edge of the cursor, patient but eager, she wants the rest of her story now, wants you to tie her question marks together, to carry her across a finish line that is really only the doorway to somewhere else. 

I want the same, my dear, I do. Let me gather my strength, let me collect my things. I've fallen apart across the floorboards but it doesn't matter now. 

All that matters
is that we get you
home.

Back

The rain arrives, cooling the steaming streets, calming your labored breaths. You wear lipstick to remind yourself that you are alive, brush your hair and look at the cars on the sidewalk, how no one sits in them during street sweeping hours like we used to in the East Village. Life is easier in the country, even if the country is only across the river. You find yourself wondering if the hard was what made you better. You've grown soft, now, all velvet skin and voluptuous curves when all you ever wanted were angles. 

The streetsweeper doesn't show, anyway, rainy days mean perhaps the storm drains take care of the work for you. I've brought the geraniums in from the fire escape, their delicate petals shielded from the world. Soft. But soft with longer lifespans. There was a time when I used to tell stories of death and destruction but all I'm left with is children's literature, and with children you have to offer hope if you take something away. 

No winter without spring, no death without new life, no sorrow without a hard-won joy. 

They say we try to give ourselves the childhoods we ourselves did not have. You always were one for delivering your messages on the nose, but this seems a little obscene even for you. Look at your manuscript, turn it over in your hand. 

See what kind of answers you are trying to give yourself.

At the End of the Day

That humid New York heat rolls in from the bay, like a tongue, your skin is clammy, it's hard to catch your breath. But the mouse ears are sprouting on the trees outside your window, the world lives, you live, just shed your winter skin and turn on a fan, this is no time for complaining. A new future lies ahead and while you're not sure what it will look like, at last you feel you want to find out. 

A little girl waits patiently at the end of your cursor. A young boy has joined her, from another story, another land. You're no end of ideas, no end of tales, when you were seven years old you told your father you wanted to be a writer and he said Yes I think so, it sits in you not like a memory but a corner stone. 

It is May now, my dear. 

And in May,

in May, 

We live. 

May Day

You're late to the research center, realizing your mistake when you're already halfway there and arriving on the upper Upper East Side sweating, jittery. They strap you into a tube and put on a nature documentary. You wonder if you chose the wrong profession, if you should have focused on swimming with otters, if you should have followed the path on which you were born. Shoulda woulda coulda. Every path is a hundred others left behind. 

You wonder if this is your midlife crisis
or if it's just May tickling your senses. 

The machine makes loud noises and you don't know how long you've been in there. Come out dizzy, reborn. Sail down Lexington Avenue until you land at the Monday bar, buzzing on a Thursday, this is not your day in the custody agreement. Someone has ordered pizza. You love New York so much you wonder how your heart hasn't burst already. 

Realize it already has, a hundred times over,
and somehow still beats after all these years.
This lesson is your greatest gift. 

You chose a path decades ago, tried leaving it time and again, always found your way back through the thicket. Some paths follow you in the woods. 

It is May now, you believe in a future now, you remember what it is to long for something again. Now is not the time to saunter, now is the time to run.

Dweller

You wake early again, sunrise flooding the open windows, New York waking up below, anticipation tingling through your synapses. May. 

When the illness recedes, you are as ever left dumbfounded, surprised by what happened, as though an unannounced storm rolled through and buried you, but now only sunshine remains. You think you should be used to it by now and it hurts that you never are. Maybe it's a sign of some remaining humanity within you. You don't want to accept that this might be a life. 

The streets look different without a coating of despair, clearer, cleaner. Your mind resumes its normal gait, words and memories are quicker to hit your lips. The obstacles at your feet are still as high as they were before, only now they don't seem unsurmountable, now it feels like you have the right shoes on, chalk on your fingertips, now you think all you have to do is climb. 

There is no time to mourn what is lost, now, only time to extract every last morsel from the marrow of what is given. It is May now, love, and in May we fly. 

It is May now, love,
and in May,
in May,
we live.