The Way You Are

Spring arrives to the island, and it overwhelms and impresses you as much this year as any before. You sit on the roof, drinking wine and staring out over the sprinkled West Village buildings, wondering if the big decisions you're making are the right ones. I'll miss this neighborhood so much, you say, but you do not yet entirely believe you'll ever leave it. Walk carefully through a sunny apartment on numbered streets and try to picture your books stacked in the first room on the right, see if you recognize your face in the mirror. 

My sister comes to town, reminds me of all the wrongs I insist on perpetuating, of the havoc I seem so intent to wreak. I only wanted rights, you know, but they evade me at every step. 

It occurs to me that the only thing I ever got right was this City. As long as you stay in its embrace, how could you ever go wrong?

Post Title

I thought of you today. She asked me about the shitty things that happen in life and all I could picture was you crouched in that window of a seven-story building, all I could feel in my chest was the cool April air against your cheeks and how quickly a body can fall. I missed your day this year; I thought perhaps enough time had passed and erased your story from my lungs, but it never will. You fade, a little, and perhaps the circumstances get a little more condensed, but you are always here. You always remind me to keep going.

I am still afraid of heights. But I am hellbent on learning how to fly.

Anyone Would Be

I have simply wanted an object to crave.

The dog wakes me early, we venture out to the river while the Village still lies sleeping. There's a cool breeze, but the sun was up way before us, the pavement is warm. It must officially be spring, we ran through Central Park in a giggle yesterday and every patch of earth was filled to the brim with flowers. The new year is brutal in its beauty, it forces itself into your every broken crevice and you think, for a moment, you are invincible. But your roommate goes to Connecticut, and in the silence she leaves behind, your every bandage unravels, your bones break and your innards spill across the unwashed floors. The news feed claims Jesus died for my sins, but I think if he knew me, he'd let the dead dog lie. 

There's a reason this city is home, you know. There's a reason I sleep soundly when the currents of a metropolis tumble every face into an unknown and keep no relationships moored around my belly. When subway trains arrive at the platform, I like to stand really close to the edge, close my eyes, and let myself get knocked back by the rushing air at their sides. But the thought of you holding my hand makes it feel like that air is getting sucked right back out of my lungs again, and the whole beautiful city gets taken from me in one fell swoop. 

Don't be so hard on yourself. It's not easy to contend with a magical city. 

It's not easy to hold on to someone who is so hellbent on falling apart. 

Let's Waste Time

I think I want you to be darker and twistier than you actually are, she says.

And the vicious flesh wounds that have ripped through your every muscle, have bled into your guts and wreaked havoc with your frailly beating heart, they seem mostly closed with those Bandaids you plastered across your skin. You walk through your days with a quiet smile and a confident direction.

But wounds heal into scars, into thick, pink bulges that do not give when you move through them. They make your steps less fluid, your laughter stick in your throat. They follow you where you go, always irritating your flustered skin, always reminding you how they tried to kill you.

So no, I am not as dark and twisty as you expected.

And it takes all I have, to keep it that way.

Big City

There's an itch at the center of my spine, it makes me equal parts apathetic and restless. I begin to open drawers, run my fingers along dusty items long neglected and long desperately to throw everything out, start fresh. Only own as much as you can carry. The daffodils I bought yesterday already overwhelm my window, keeping in step with the sunlight. The promise of spring runs rampant in my periphery, all I want is to leap madly into whatever unforeseen futures may come with it.

There was a time, when you longed for adventure and saying yes to the unknown, open to what magic it may bring. For too long, you have allowed yourself to be coddled, in some safe space that only pretended to give you the world, when really all it did was show it through a window. I don't care if you are scared. A new year lies waiting in the wings.

Prove at last you are worth it.

Ring the Alarm

I walked east on 14th street, one block between 6th and 5th avenue, with my eyes closed again today. The spring sun shines so brightly and it seems impossible to ignore it, to walk eyes open, face pointed at the ground, as though sunlight weren't the most amazing form of magic available. I'm sure it looks ridiculous, having to open my eyes now and then to avoid walking straight into oncoming pedestrians or construction scaffolding, but I don't care. My every text is full of exclamation points and giggles, it takes all my strength not to run straight out of the office and leap into the streets. Spring is like that first immense gasping breath you take after diving deep underneath the water and rolling along at the bottom of a wave, and it makes you feel so terrifically alive, with the slight tingling sensation at the edge of you skin that you very nearly weren't, and so the mere act of breathing seems a most gratifying gesture.

There's a large sheet of paper hanging over my bed -- bullet points of a story barely half written. I made a few notes as my mind raced past it, and then, scribbled at the top: Remember: You own this piece. Your imagination dictates its reality.

It seemed as real a statement as any.

Över Isen

There's nothing for you here.

The day beats me slowly to a pulp. Too much silence, I wade around in the mountains of debris I leave around the apartment to cloud my vision. I  consider drowning myself in the bottles on the top shelf but it seems like a further waste of a being already falling apart on her own, so why bother. Various truths drift across the inside of my eyelids and they knock the air straight out of me. You only have this one life, and yet you seem hellbent on wasting it. What was once, somehow, a quirky series of events has turned into a legitimate mental illness, and you see the years spiral out of control in mediocrity. Was this what you fought so hard to uphold? What this what you agreed to abandon all the other paths to reach?

The day is unforgivingly long outside your window, and you have to persevere to outlast it. But life is not a game of who can be stubborn the longest.

It occurs to you that you have no idea what life is, at all.