To Stay That Way

When they come to count the words
too much is still left unsaid
We scramble with pennies
I wish I had told you months ago
But the time will never be right
and I don't know how to make it.

I busy myself
with other tricks

It doesn't help.

Turbulence

How quickly the days pass. What a treat with upcoming festivities, parties, plans. Around each bend another treat. The research study continues, I spit in cups, I put numbers to feelings. All day, energy 8, 9, stress level 1, 2, sleepiness, 3. I leave my last sample when I am so tired I can no longer see straight. Sleepiness, 9, energy, 2, stress level 8. Numbers to the undefined, the knot in my gut, the unease. There is too much to be done. and every moment is precious.

Your words, they stir me, they remind me there is something I'm supposed to be doing.

I write a million lists. They're not it.

Vows

The Brooklyn winds are cold
sometimes
but the Brooklyn love
moves oceans
and lands
and weathers the storm
like it was inevitable.

I saw your faces
on the screen
so happy
like little kids
like this was the first day
and a million more would come
each better than the next
and every one was yours.

I don't know if there is
forever
but if there is
it always belonged
to you.

All Kidding You

The morning was early, alcohol still steeping slowly in my blood, when she packed up her bags. By the time I awoke again, she was gone. The apartment was quiet, the rain relentless. How lonely freedom feels, when it arrives on your doorstep uninvited. When you are left behind and nothing is the same anymore. The day became a steady stream of visitors, instead, to fill the void, to chase off the storm. For a minute, as we laid tangled on the couch, it snowed. That'll never last.

Later, wine bottles amassed and eyes grew hazy. Ears ringing, the silence made her quiver, we had no answers. Advice tossed around like question marks, not sure we'd know the target if we hit it. Castles build themselves in the sky.

I spend my days looking for ladders.

Substitute

My muscles are sore, my body tired. It is long before my bed time when I creep under covers and fight to stay awake. The days find me at a job long abandoned, it takes my every ounce of energy, I adore every minute.

That there is something at which one is intrinsically Good. That there is a spot where the pieces fall into place and something from the back of your spine steers. One of the children fell asleep on my arm while another nestled at my side; discomfort could not make me move an inch. Hours passed with little lives hanging on my hips as we went about the tasks at hand. As though there were a nook where they were meant to fit.

I stumbled weakly to the office, another shift to work through once the first was completed. Remembered the feeling of being good at something, and how many mornings I would wake exhausted but every time happy about the job to which I was about to go. My father told me it wasn't good enough; I know what he meant, and I know he was partly right. But to these children, all the world is new, every laugh is a clean slate. They look in my eyes, I am cured.

Who You Are

It creeps through me, unlocking secret passageways and doors long closed. It trickles through rusty veins and cold eyelids. A person too long forgotten, a laughter too rarely heard.

We sit on the couch, tipping random Rieslings and catching up the passing months since summer was young and the water was warm, and we built a friendship over bare feet and other bottles still. When we part ways at the train, our shoes are cold with rain but my heart is warm with reminders. A million post-its fly through my head with things that are wrong in life, but when he asked how things were, I said good, and at some point I realized I meant it. The list of people to adore grows long; it pins me to the city when I am not looking.

There is a force in my step again, I remember it from before; there is a smile in my eyes. It climbs up my spine, a winding course, I know what this is. This is happy, and the person forgotten, was me.

About Last Night

Sunday afternoon and the light lasts an hour but the coffee many more. As people traded, one after another, on the tables around us, we sorted through the definitions of our beings. Tell me about yourself. But there is no answer, to such a non-question. Choose your colors, paint your picture, this is the moment when your slate is clean. Your answers rehearsed, you've been practicing your social resume for months, they sound decent enough. You applaud yourself your ability to smile that genuine smile, blissfully ignorant of what lies behind it. Cold hands grow warm along the body of another, things begin that were not, before.

I don't know, I said later, on the couch with the roommate. I don't know, she replied. I don't know is not no. I don't know is not nothing.

Perhaps that, by default, makes it something.