A Plague On Both Your Houses

We were young; we knew not yet that the world did not revolve around us. Our world was that small town, those rules, a universe of feelings fit into yet-small bodies, unexperienced, flawless. We navigated our presents without care for our futures, and even the new morning could see our dispositions changed. We sat in the back of the movie theater and drowned in Shakespeare one night, each other's lips the next. All the world was a stage and yet we required it not, our stage was so small, so contained.

Are we the same people, still? With our children, our careers, our stage so much larger, our considerations so much more complex, are we still the eager youths we once were?

Perhaps the question is best left unanswered, the ghosts best left unstirred. We know how it ends; why wait until the final breath, hoping for altered pasts that may save the future? The exit music plays, we leave the theater and return to our real lives, and everything has changed.

That's the only fact that remains the same.

the Swan Queen

The theater emptied quietly. Thursday night, there were only a handfull of patrons there. Besides, it had been running for a while. We parted ways on Broadway, she found a cab quickly while I pulled my clothes tighter, tried to catch my breath. The New York night was freezing again. Stiff fingers tried desperately to roll a cigarette, finally I had to stop in the street. I stuck my trembling hands in my coat pockets and smoked with the cigarette resting between my lips all the way down west 10th.

The film stayed with me as I walked home. It heightened every sense. I heard the steady beat of my heels against the concrete, it echoed against the quiet townhouse bricks and reassured me. Lights strung in trees seemed to shine brighter, the cold was sharper. People walking past didn't affect me. I felt a dance move in me, every muscle tensed, relaxed, twisted and leapt, my eyes alert. Battles of a dark heart and a frail mind, or perhaps the opposite, dueling and teasing within me.

I suppose the story was not new. I suppose the insight was not revealing. We already have the answers within us. We already know what they say. The magic lies in having those feelings stirred anew.

I felt it.

Perfect.

I was perfect.

Play. God.

I return, after such a long absence, to the Book. It lies there, waiting, dogeared and unkempt. I forget where I ended. I forget what the whole thing is about, or perhaps I only pretend to. I turn on a playlist from long ago, and I get to work.

Perhaps it's the music. Perhaps it's the sad note on which I last ended. But within a minute I am engrossed in the story, I forget about the room, the cold floor, the list of things to do before bed. Orphan puppy lies on my chest, wrapped in my college sweater, while I type furiously, trying to fight the story that is already there, the path of which is already clear.

I cannot save it. I cannot paint a brighter ending. It wrote itself in my mind long ago, and I fear with it, I wrote my own story as well. The playlist like exit music. End scene. I see a deadline looming up ahead. When I have to be finished with the book. When I have to be finished with the adventure.

Maybe people are never satisfied, she says. Maybe we always have the dream that got away, while we revert to what's safe, what's comfortable. I still regret the things that never were.

The draft from the window rushes down to the floor where I lie. It makes me shiver. How late is too late to rewrite our endings?

of Sand and Sea

Such a sunny Sunday; when I woke up, my window was open, and mild, cool air wafted in over my warm bed. I can only assume I had opened it in my sleep earlier that night. After a week of procrastination, finally I collected my quarters and went to do laundry, to wash the clothes of my trip. For so long I had put it off, reluctant to rid them of their salt and sand. My gawdily colorful beach towel came out smelling of clean, soft, dryer sheets and it made me sad. I left the trip behind. We couldn't throw it out, said my mother of the sand, we emptied it into the flower pot. My mother is not one for nostalgia. Such is our love for Australia.

Meanwhile, orphan puppy has taken to sleeping in my bed. I allow my sleep to be interrupted, inconvenienced. I find myself postponing things on my to-do list in order to bury her in love that will mend her broken heart. I upend my every container of tenderness on her for the last few days she is with us, seemingly doling out more affection the nearer the farewell comes.

Typical.

It is easier to love what I know will not last. This is no comment of the safety of objects lost.

I just tire so quickly, of commitments.

Saturday Light Naïve

St. Marks remains a pillar of comfort, of reliability.

Lives fall apart in the city, even after years and wedding bands and babies. What do I do now? she says, and I have nothing to say. Black and white is never as easy when his grays have nestled into your every pore. Your life is mine now, my life yours. If this ends here, who are we?

We walk west until St. Marks turns into 8th until it ends and we navigate the greenwich village maze. I cannot find my pyjamas and fall asleep in the button down shirt of a man who is not mine.

Shirt and man, both.

Friday Nights

We are going to dance! she exlaims for a week, preparing for the weekend of her birthday. A motley crew trundles through Williamsburg to the narrow bar where lumber jack-wannabes crowd onto the nonexistant dance floor, and the DJ loses himself in 1980 and 1991.

Eventually, I walk home alone down glazed streets along a row of cat calls. New York City sleeps when no one is looking and only the garbage gets picked up. Orphan puppy is tumbling about in my week's worth of dirty laundry; when I go to bed she nestles in my armpit and putters happily while I sort through work emails that were lost in the excitement of Friday evening.

How simple the pleasures of life, sometimes.

Ultima Thule

They said there would be an ice storm. I woke up to glistening, frozen branches outside my window, but walked out to inches of cold, cold water all along Hudson Street. Miserable doesn't begin to cover it. The children stopped and played in every puddle between the swim lesson and the house. Their joy so contagious, I couldn't keep from dancing the last block myself.

I want this winter to be over. I always want winter to be over, but this year, it seems like such a continuous slap in the face.

Still, as I walked home from Hell's Kitchen last night, my back straight and my heels reassuringly even in their pace across the slippery streets, I couldn't help but feel happy about where I was. The grayer New York gets, the colder, the tougher, the dirtier, the more miserable, the more my heart paints curlicues and rainbows around its name. I miss Australia something fierce, the sun, the surf, the sweetness of the people and the ease of living, but this is my home.

This is my home.