Chuppah

It's the part where they are hoisted into the air on chairs, when the music gets frenetic and the celebrations peak, when you think your own fears would not endure this sort of elation, that's the part you like the least. Maybe only because it does not bring you the sort of joy it's supposed to, and it's the discrepancy that chafes. 

The part you like the most is when you sweet talk the house manager into letting you take a bouquet off one of the tables, and you walk home through Red Hook in canvas shoes with an explosion of flowers in your hands. 

Your doctor looks you over, says you look good but you know she sees only ligaments and veins, only charts for an age group you have yet to reconcile with. There's a group of young girls in the corner of your writing bar who come in to knit together, and you adore them. You, too, decided Mondays were meant for creative corners. The bartender only wants to talk about Europe trips. She scowls every time a new patron enters the bar. You adore her. The youths only order Diet Cokes or bitters and soda. It's hard not to complain about the generations that come after. 

It's sunny out, it's warm out, the people of New York peel the layers off themselves and emerge with smiles from the wreckage. In like a lion, out like a lamb. Everything happens too fast. 

The part you like the most
is the one where you're around to see it.  

Sweep

There's a stillness in the after, a sort of grace in accomplishment. You wake early, lighter, out of dreams of moving. Your cousin says maybe she was wrong and spring was the answer all along, somehow her illness faded with the coming of sunlight. You relish her relief. Across the river, a darkness has rolled in that the seasons cannot excise. Across the ocean, a war bellows, a tale as old as time. 

Somehow, we live our little lives in the immense tornado of the big picture. People have children in the middle of war, people fall in love in the middle of collapse. They call to say he proposed on the other side of the world and their joy is so simple, when nothing else is. 

You feel yourself returning to the world. To life. You know May waits around the corner, for once you believe it will come.  Everything is falling apart, except it isn't. Not everything. 

The four-leaf clovers are just about to sprout.  

Step

All day, mired in deductions and expenses, a mind wrapped tight in focus, a spring sun climbing higher yet across the sky. Only an hour's break between. In the old days, you would've laced your shoes, would've taken the chance to unwind your strangled thoughts, would've reveled in the sunlight along the water. 

The thing with old days and new days is
they're all a figment of our imagination. 

The thing is if what you want to do is lace your shoes and 
let your feet think for you, 
you still can. 

So I did.  

En:dure

Your flight leaves at 7 a.m., he says. I couldn't figure out how to add a bag. You take a deep breath, run through the annoyances you needn't say and ignore the news that tell you security lines are beyond the pale. What is reality, when there is starlight and happenstance out there? When there is whimsy and surprise? 

You speak clearly into the room that you haven't an outlet, stand impatient in the midst of your shortcoming and haven't yet reached the problem-solving stage when he fixes it for you. Just like that. Sometimes you think being seen is the greatest gift we can give each other. She runs into the bar to for an encouraging hug, before it's time to go home and tell the children. We do not use words like stages, like prognosis, like five-year-survival rate, but they sit at the back of your throat like a vise regardless. There's a weight in your belly that you do not think you can get rid of now, in my dreams I take care of babies and puppies but fall down steep cliffs, the symbolism hits you over the head, she writes from across the Atlantic to say she is bed ridden and can't remember how to breathe. 

We are on our last legs, March. We are doing what we can, but we are at the end of our carefully tied strings, please. Give us one foothold at the edge of this cliff, please, give us one solid push onto dry land. 

The heart breaks and breaks 
and breaks and breaks and

one day surely 
you'll come out alive. 

 

Strike

We're back on the picket lines tomorrow at nine, he says, closing his bar tab, so this is the only drink I'm allowed today. The bartender sticks a lime in it, grumbles at the service, rolls her eyes in your direction as another group comes in. Mondays were not meant for working, she seems to say, as she makes another batch of negronis. 

You make eyes at the striking barfly, wonder what else he could tell you if given the time, wonder what else you could teach him under union rules. He waxes on about negotiations and there's a glimmer in his eyes that you think could be better spent elsewhere, you are no good to anyone in this March gloom, useless before spring bursts into your fingertips, you do not remember how to bring a person home (metaphorically). You wish him luck, turn back to the bartender, commiserate over the weight of the world. 

Once spring bursts into my fingertips, 
you whisper to yourself, 
once life returns to these frozen rivers in my veins,
I will show you a match, 

I will show you a strike 
to start a
fire. 

Snaps

Descend the stairs to an East Village basement, leave the spring air behind – reluctant – greet new faces like old friends, you're not sure you put your own face on right, or chose the right one for the occasion. That's the problem with masks, you have to know which one you're wearing. Snaps for the readers though you didn't feel their heartbeat, you wonder in amazement at these groups of writers who want to venture into the world, who want to see their audience react to their turns of phrase. You only ever wanted to be alone with words, community sullies the fantasy you think. This is not the moment to air such a grievance. 

Later, on Second Avenue, gentle spring rain on warm concrete sidewalk, little glimpses of poetry remind themselves to me I have

sunk so many years into these streets allowed
so much love to fill the cracks in the side walk I am
not sorry

Because when I stumble these streets now
the magic we built together is what
lifts me up and

carries me home. 

Hum

Sunset over the Manhattan skyline, you sit in a 21st-floor office and watch the golden light illuminate the skyscrapers. Remember a Port Authority office where you got no work done for all the staring across rooftops you did. It's been too long. Here is my city. This is what you came for, this is the lifeblood that beats inside you, steady, joyous. 

You stand on the subway platform feeling alive, it pulses through you, sets the misaligned boulders straight, how simple everything when the answers are right. You knew that. You had only forgotten. We are not as broken as we think.

It's only, 
life gets in the way
of living.  

The Patience

You wake in a sweat, the radiators tripping over themselves to be useful, you wish you felt the same. Instead, the heat drags you through a daze in the morning, the outside freeze like a cruel reminder you have no power. They say the crocus is in bloom in the botanical gardens but you cannot feel in your chest what you have not seen with your own eyes, this is the problem with hope, it needs something to hold on to. 

But then, so do you. 

It occurs to you that perhaps you are not yet out of the woods, that you are hanging on by that final thread before the path turns and the trees clear. Perhaps this doesn't mean redemption didn't come for you, only that you expected it too soon. Expected it with the early morning dawn and hints of green buds in the tree pits. 

You were always impatient for a resolution. Just wait a little longer. Hope is the thing with its feet firmly on the ground.  

Leaves Turned

Bright March sun after days of gloom is like a shot of adrenaline to your system, even as the winds from the sea run icy cold. You lap it up like you've been starving a lifetime, and perhaps you have. It's a simple joy, every year, and in an age where both simple and joy are hard to come by, it's fine to just take it. 

You know there'll come a time, soon, soon, when all you will want is to run. You know what May will grab you like a whirlwind and dance you into dawn, but in this brief moment, in this threshold month of March, you deliberate, question yourself. Is it possible the answer to do exactly the opposite of what you've done all these decades? Is it possible you could have everything you dreamed of if you only stayed put? 

The thing is, May will come, as it always does. 

And you'll never get the answer.  

Mondays

It rains and rains, but the air is warm, the bar is warmer still. Something about a living room outside your house, something about a place you've earned by building yourself into its foundation. Good things take time, this was always the way. You're too impatient, you're too unchained, you refuse to be relied upon but then here you are, longing for someone to rely on, looking for a soft place to land. You cannot have both. 

Twenty years you've given this city and you still act like you're still considering your options. Twenty years it's been the love of your life and you still panic at the idea of putting down your furniture. It's not an attractive feature, you know it. How shiny it looks from the outside. But how flighty up close, they retract their hands to keep from burning at your flame. 

I just thought we could build the roots in motion. 
Thought time could be what happened while you
were living.  

Re:cur

The F train is waiting as you run down the stairs, a late night blessing from the city, don't think I don't see it. We had rambled down University like we were 23 again, but slipped into the old world hotel bar like we weren't. It's easy to be grateful for life when you are reminded of its finitude, easy to rejoice in friendships when they sit across from you. She uses carefully selected words from his medical charts, carefully sidestepping prognoses and lifespan and emphasizing breakthrough technologies, and you both let her because it is the right thing to do. 

By morning, the city is cold again. March weather, you repeat to yourself like a mantra, eyes peeled to the bright green buds braving the temperatures. They're coming. It's coming. You feel a bit like the grasshopper, spending your summers singing and pretending one day there won't be a winter. 

But one day winter will come for you. 
And when it does, you won't have anything but a song to keep you warm.  

Starur

I'd rather we didn't have those sunny days first, tricking us into believing it was spring, she says, as the heavy snowflakes smatter against the ground. The air is freezing, but you are unperturbed. You know March requires seven starur, seven winter storms after the starlings arrive, seven heartbreaks before you've earned the breath in your lungs again. 

I know it requires making it to April 1st,  to really be on the safe side. 

I'm looking at house sits in the English countryside for June, looking at Stockholm rentals for July and warm West Coast cliffs for August. I'm looking at cramped Manhattan nooks for fall and sweet spring evenings for May. 

I know there was a time when I wanted 
to die
when I couldn't imagine living day in
and day out
of this existence, and I said to myself
like I could will it to be true 
it is the illness speaking

and the thing is
it was.

Spire

The day after whirlwinds are so simple in their clarity, so light in their stillness. There's nothing earth-shattering to their insight, they just wait by the foot of your bed, unassuming. You wake with air in your lungs, as if you'd found a part of yourself you'd forgotten. You've felt joy before, you remember it now, it wasn't always a struggle to feel purpose. How New York can feel easy, obvious, how with the right spark plug it doesn't have to be so much work. 

You don't know how to make the right concoction, how to align the stars so the magic happens. But it's good to be reminded that they can make it happen all on their own. 

All you have to do is stick around long enough
to let them.  

Re:vive

In an instant, it’s like no time has passed. Like none of the months and years and silences existed. You talk a mile a minute, threads of conversations juggled like balls of yarn between us. Running to the restaurant just as it closes, sweet talking the server into letting us order, we don’t need menus, I pile dollar bills into a mountain of tip in gratitude. When we leave, it starts to rain, but we are unfazed, New York looks out for us. New York always looked out for us, it sensed the electricity, knew all it had to do was feed it. We stumble into port authority, this cesspool of city grit and even that looks like an amusement park, a place created just for our whims. 

I knew that fateful day that it wasn’t the end, knew that there was something worth holding onto despite the weight in my chest. Told myself not to throw the baby out with the bath water and I was right. 

Sometimes the reminders come just when we need them. 

Saved

The Monday bartender greets you with her typical mix of disdain and appreciation, a relationship years in the making that forever teeters between the familiar and the tentative, you take careful steps toward etching yourself into the hardwood floor. Do you remember that bar on 23rd street, those late nights on sawdust floors, those last ritual Budweiser bottles, a whole life wrapped around its quiet existence? I have nothing but gratitude for it now, you know, but I can't go back there without you, can't build another existence from its ashes. New York turns a page with every new life you live and there's no rewind button, the streets look different each time you walk them and isn't that what your impatient heart wanted all along? Careful what you wish for, echoes across your brow but you made this bed, no one else. 

I sleep better than I thought I could. 

Tossing and turning but I wake,
rested.  

DST

War rages on, is it your war now that you've joined the side of the Righteous? Do you take on the sins of the father when you marry the son? The questions are too big to consider yet, you scrub the shelves in your fridge instead and hold out for Daylight Saving time in the morning. Spring forward. Spring forward. 

If you say it enough it sounds like an oath. 

Welcome

In a moment, everything changes. A letter of acceptance, a door opening. This wasn't how you thought this life would go, but can't that be said for anything. You look back at the winding paths behind you, how each jump, each stumble led you here. There's no explaining it, and perhaps you shouldn't try. She asks you about books and you find yourself tingle, find your eyes light up to get all the words out as fast as you can. There's something there. 

There's something there.

America, I've given you all, and now here we are. America, we didn't always choose each other but we always came back. It's a strange, dark time to hold ceremony, but perhaps that's exactly why we should do it. 

Perhaps the darkness is not what makes us human
but celebrations in the face it.

Lift the Damn Thing

An icy rain smatters across the windowsills, each drop landing like nails on the surface. Of course it hurts for buds to burst. You cling to promises of spring but wake in anxiety and you don't know why. I dreamed you were near, and now you are not. Perhaps that is why. Perhaps love is why we ache, and is why we hesitate. He writes to say, don't come to England, it's to hard being poor here, and you wonder if he knows what it is to be poor in New York. Lateral moves, you think, and wonder what the point is to any of it. 

The bartender brings you snacks, buys you a beer, leaves you alone to your work. 

Of course it hurts for buds to burst.  That's why you hesitate. 

Until you don't.  

Steps

March. March. March. You whisper it to yourself like a promise, like it will bring the sprouts from the ground and the warmth to your breath. You stand at the ferry landing staring straight into the afternoon sunlight, feel your pale irises drink it in like a wanderer in the desert. I think we made it out alive, you say out loud into the space between your lungs, you know it's too soon, you know you need to knock on wood and spit in the street but you're brave now, you're stronger now than you've been in years, so much crumbles around you but you still have air in your lungs and as such you are already miles ahead of where you've been. 

The first step is always to survive. If you've gotten that far, you're practically halfway there. 

If you've gotten that far, 
all you've left to do is
thrive.  

Snowdrop

The snow recedes, takes dirt and fear and winter with it. The streets glitter with melt, I strain my neck across all of Central Park to find a snowdrop; they evade me. The fear remains, a little too much for my liking, how do I outrun what's been etched in my bones? I haven't learned the right ways to react to the ordinary. 

They say grief sits in you like an illness, and you know you carry the ache generations in the making. Back home, your father collapses under his on weight and you start to think he will never be well and perhaps he will drag the rest of you with him. You've spent a lifetime trying to keep people from anchoring to your drag. To what end? In the street, my car holds an unearned dent, a silent scratch. The Universe speaks and I wonder when I'll be ready

to listen.