Elizabeth and Prince

I moved in in 1985, he says somewhere along Houston. I payed maybe $300 at the time, but it was still money. I was moving out of a 3 bed-room down the street and I've been there ever since. I considered my own residences since I was 11 and realized I'd never lived anywhere more than 4 years in that tiny West Village room with the teapots, and even that seemed fleeting and ethereal. Vagabond, he says. After 17 years I assume he is right. We look at the construction and remember a gas station that is no more. They had the most gorgeous signage. 

Things change, everything changes and when you stop to notice it, it cuts in your chest. Try not to remember. Walk up Bowery, once messy and downtrodden and alive now laced with drunk teenage girls trying to get into the hotel club. I elbow them as I go. Laugh inside when they fall. At least tomorrow I wake up in New York again.

b., amended

When I walk into a room
I do not light
it
up

Fuck. 

b.

There's a space
after the end
before whatever comes next comes
(and things will come
because life doesn't stop
waiting for you to catch up)
that is so empty
so quiet
so dark
you forget why you ran the race at all

You close your eyes
But you still wake up
with yourself.

2017

A year has passed since David Bowie died, and so much else, you are not oblivious. Sometimes it takes you longer to get places than it does others. Sometimes you feel like life is one of those dreams where you run and run but get nowhere while the darkness chases you. When you look back you've gotten somewhere, after all, but fuck if it's enough. The bar across the street has 2-for-1 drinks on Tuesdays, you see the sign from your bedroom window and try to find one good reason not to fall down the fire escape and land in drunken oblivion.

A new year lies at your feet. They keep doing that, and piling up behind you like discarded wrappers. In the distance, earlier years gleam a little more than others, like something good was in there. The year that passed already burns in a tin can. I took a shower this morning so long it felt like I washed the entire year away. Nothing that rotted in that year will stay with us, will come into this new treat of a future, everything begins now.

January is grey but inside you is a spark, and a flame, and the knowledge that if you fight this war you could set fire to the stars.

Hosianna

Illness rages through me, my body on fire and my eyes only able to see a foot ahead. Words lie silent, what could they have to say? A ridiculous year lies behind you, you will remember always the death toll, literal and otherwise, but it's nearing its end. I read a book about New York on the plane and nearly cried.

Some things have not died. They beat in your heart strong as ever. You remember that, too.

Christmas Day

You spend a few days in twisted agony, in swirling down an inevitable rabbit hole and gasping for air at every turn. The days are warm and the nights freeze you right to the bone, it's hard to remember which way is up. Christmas Day arrives and Second Avenue is deserted in the early morning. I turn on the Christmas tree lights and make a cup of coffee before remembering my own name but it returns eventually.

Late in the afternoon, much later than planned but better than never, I finally make my way outside to find New York alive, well, and bustling despite itself. At the summit of Williamsburg bridge, the sun begins to set over the Statue of Liberty, hoards of people gather, stopping their runs or hopping off their fixie bikes to capture it on their respective apps, but I can barely hear them.

Because when I despair, does the city not come straight to my aid? When I falter, does it not pick me up in the most beautiful ways? A deep orange lays on the Empire State Building, the Chrysler dazzles on fire. Puzzle pieces of Brooklyn skylines stack themselves around the horizon. I forget all things, so easily I stumble, but there is one conviction in which I never waver. New York City is home in a way that my soul never was on its own, it sates me and fills me and lets me love when I don't think I know what love is. I am not right, without it, but in its arms I want for nothing.

The sun sets eventually, the balmy afternoon giving way to winter winds, and the crowds disperse. I pick myself back up, breathing now in a way I haven't for weeks, months maybe. Who needs poetry when there is this place?

Who needs anything else, at all?

17th and 5th

I crossed 5th avenue today just before sunset, Friday afternoon busy with holiday shoppers and angry taxi cabs as per usual, but halfway across the avenue I looked south to Greenwich village and a freedom tower spire at the end of the island, and the afternoon sun hit the high buildings with such a fire, and carved their shapes into such sharp contours, and I looked north to see a massive Empire State Building firm and steady on its block, and for a split second I lost my breath and remembered that I have never seen a more beautiful sight.

A piece of me perpetually lives on that crosswalk. The rest of me lives on blissfully, merely knowing it exists.