Summer in the City

All my friends say
that of course it's
going to get better
(better)
(better)

The heat breaks. Finally, for a minute, there is reprieve. The pain in my arm subsides, slightly, days pass and you breathe, it's like a haze is lifted from your eyes. We went to the beach and I stared at the horizon until I forgot my name, let the salt water wash over my teeth until they went numb, we rode home on the A train for an hour and I was tired in that delicious way that only the sea can make a person.

I walked down the Bowery today, little drops of rain falling hesitantly into the steaming air and the early evening sunlight waded across the brown brick buildings and water towers of what used to be a wasteland. The street smelled of warm city, dirty, crowded, impossibly alive and unequivocally New York; my heart swelled a hundred times and I smiled at strangers, I couldn't stop. As I crossed Houston, he sent a picture of late night twilight, open space and melancholic nature, and I recognized the feeling instantly.

It seems a lifetime ago, now, I stood in an apartment unpacking bowls and books I didn't want to unearth, knowing that each piece placed moored me further to a place I didn't want to be, a place that wasn't New York. Leaving the city tore a gash in my insides I didn't know if I could ever heal, I almost forget now what it was like. The mere shadow of the memory scares me out of ever wanting to leave it again. I know there are beautiful things elsewhere, I know I have been happy, I know there is a life for people out there.

But when that golden light hits the avenues, when I see endless miles of the city stacked up like Legos around me and the sounds of its steady pulse beat through me like nothing has ever been broken and I will never be lost, the scar in my gut smooths out, the horizon grows fuzzy and uninteresting. It's not that I'm scared of leaving.

It's that the only thing I ever wanted to do was stay.

Diverted

Return to the city and find it has turned into a steaming bath. People move slowly, the air not at all, and you gasp for breath as beads of sweat make their way down the small of your back. He sends pictures of rain; you know the way the air feels there in July rain, but it's too far to even long for. I walked through a quiet dark street in Queens and found it lit intermittently by lightning bugs, a steady, pulsating yellow lights alongside my browning knees. It's a gentle reminder of the sweetness of nature, how it will outlast us all. A comforting thought. 

My body continues to turn itself inside out in pains, I take pills, shake it off, try not to listen. Someone broke into our apartment last week and didn't steal a thing; I don't know if I should be grateful. This heat twists everything and it's hard to see clearly. Perhaps I wish you were here, but it might be a trick of the lights. I walked past the remains of a bunk bed on avenue C last night; the same bright red beams as of our little pocket on Curry Hill all those years ago. I slept like a dream in that bed -- all of New York was unknown and unclaimed, I loved it more than I could fear it, and it carried me across a thousand unknowns, did it not? Here it lay like the collapsed skeleton of a long extinct creature, like a relic. 

Perhaps that might be what I am, too, falling apart at the seams and too tired to be afraid of anything.

It doesn't feel any different than being alive. 

If You Call

The days pass in quiet ease. Slow morning coffee on the porch, swim, sun, rinse, repeat. We walked out to the Main Street to watch fireworks from across the hill; people sat in rows along the sidewalks, no one spoke. 

How easy to try to rush the answer. To stress about finding it in such short time of reprieve. Relax now! You yell at your insides, and they laugh, mocking, in return. 

But then you wake one morning, rushing out the door to make the most of the remaining half day, before traffic congests and your alarm clock begins its count down to sweaty, aching rat race days, and as you lie on the dock, letting the warm wood seep into your pores, let the blue waters dance along your spine, listening to the constant rhythm of silence, there you see them. Distant, still, soft around the edges like mornings before putting on your glasses, but definitely, irrevocably, there. You swim a few more strokes in cool, gentle waves. Know everything will be alright. 

Copy Paste

Rimbaud by the lake and nothing seems real. Sunshine, swimming, your skin turns pink in patches but not the swath of brown across your shoulders, you mourn. My body begins to give up, yells in pain and I know the solution but it's the same that would appease my mind as well, we are simple creatures and carry the answers within. God does not know better. Nor aspirin.

She writes from the homeland to say there must be an alternative. We must be able to grow old without falling in line, without being funneled into babies and 9-5s or pathetically clinging to 20-somethings and their ignorant bliss. She says I'm not looking to be anyone's role model, but I believe she may well come to be mine. He sends pictures from a cab, a last wave before they disappear on the horizon, and you fear there's meaning in that but you're not ready to find out what it may be.

The sun set last night in quiet majesty across an endless valley. We sat on the back porch watching it go, the air more quiet than you've known in ages. I feel like an answer may whisper itself through the breeze. I just have to sit here long enough to let myself hear it.

Som Vi Sa

Sticky subway pillars, it's a hundred degrees in the underground and ages until the next local train maybe I should have taken a cab after all but Park Avenue is so quiet this time of night and it's like a small gift from the city to have it all to yourself. I drank too much, I can't feel my skin anymore but my tooth hurts. It moves like a weather vane when my heart hasn't the strength to gauge the storms ahead. We spoke of you but nothing means anything anymore, distance makes the heart tired and quiet in the long run as you know. Upper east side building scattered around us in midsummer twilight, I take deep breaths in air you could cut with a knife. This is life. Tomorrow races at me, the train bumbles so slowly through the tunnels. 

I saw scars on her arms this morning. This is life. We get by any way we can. The train makes only express stops to the edge of the island. You think perhaps there's another way you should wander. 

But it's too late now to know. 

Fire

The slope is slippery, you know this, the swirling vortex will take you with it and you have to fight it so not to drown. You feign resistance but slice the knife deeper and deeper into your skin. Relax into the warm thick stream of blood, the momentary relief it offers. Only when it sticks to your skin, plasters against your cheek do you realize it is but quicksand and you only fall further in by indulging it. The weather turns sweltering. 

You know it will pass, a hundred times you repeat it to yourself, it will pass. 

The only question is, who will you be when it does? 

Strawberry Moon

The fall continues across the summer solstice. I tumble aimlessly, hitting rocks and dirt on my way down but unable to grasp at roots or ledges as I go. It's the longest day of the year and all I can think is how tomorrow is darker, and the day after darker still. The air has gotten so warm, suddenly, I sleep naked and gasp for air, perhaps it's just a trick of the lights.

You know the sorrow will pass. You know you will wake up one morning and it'll seem all but a bad dream, look over your shoulder and see receding mist behind you nothing is as scary in the daytime.

It is only life. What harm can it do for it to shake a little.