For Now

A couple breaks up next to our table at breakfast. Sunny, mild Sunday morning in the East Village and she cries into the remains of her kale salad. His plate is clean, his face looks bothered that this isn't over yet. They split the check; I want to tell her to leave and stick him with the bill, but she is feigning civility. The space is small; everyone knows what is going on. It's not even noon.

I went for a long run, later, as dusk was settling in and Brooklyn was going dark across the water. I thought how this city is mine, how it continues to live and breathe in me day after day and what a blessing that is. What a terrible abyss if it no longer should be. My steps were lighter at the reminder.

We are not out of the woods.
But we are in them, together.

Spiral

You tell him you are climbing out of the muck but it isn't true
You are being dragged into the quicksand
suffocated by its cloying messes
tumbling helplessly down a rabbit hole of your own delusions
You know there is daylight
somewhere
But you don't know
anymore
how long it'll be till you see it.

Home

The weather turns, cold winds blow from the north and change is on the rapidly approaching horizon. We've spent some time, quite some time now, in blissful nostalgia, old pieces in their right places, and how easy it's been to pretend they weren't ever broken, how sweet. But goodbyes always come in the end, and you stand on a frozen Brooklyn street corner figuring out how best to say them. The answer, it turns out, is as though they are just another piece.

Because after all, have you not also left, have you not been on the receiving end of encouragement and through inescapable sadness known somehow that goodbyes are no more than see you soons? This jagged edge, this piece that doesn't seem you had planned will also fit, eventually.

I rode the J train back over the bridge, back to Empire State Buildings and Chrysler spires, back to a warm, dirty jumbled East Village home, back to the piece that I squeezed gratefully into its crooked slot and made fit again. I thought I have never seen a more beautiful sight, but I think that every time. I have never loved you more than I do now.

I mean it every time.

Tumble

It occurs to me
That even after years of calm
of keeping my head above the surface

I am only ever treading water.

And the second I stop
I drown.

Near Moon

Blue light streaming in from skylight windows. How quiet the world outside its center. We kicked leaves today like children, but went to bed like adults with the world on our shoulders. How far the sheets can stretch at opposite ends of a full size mattress. An omnipotent ruler carries us in his careless hands; none are left unspoiled.

Those who think they are will suffer a harsh blow under his thumb.

Shelter

A world storms, great clouds roll in over a forecast that had predicted sunshine. We walk the streets in a daze, how nothing seems real when the rug is swept from under you and the chasm opens. I left my job one day and I'm not coming back. Perhaps this wasn't the time to believe in a brighter future.

We took a bus to the eastern end of the long island, caught a ferry, made our way through golden foliage and down a hidden path, found a quiet paradise where nothing seemed to exist but the now. How far away the world sometimes. I slept a hundred hours in silent blackness and let the answers come to me in time.

When all the storms have raged, we will still be here. When the fires have burned, when the wars have been fought, when the angry men have yelled and lost their voices, something greater will emerge from the rubble. We will find a way, because we have to. I will carry this heavy heart until it can find reason to fly.

Trickle Down

Crawl out from the rubble
Day after the great fall
Rub your eyes
Stare at the rain

Where could we possibly go
from here?