If I Could Be There

We spend our days in art, in the impossible gifts the city gives you when you dare to ask for them, we navigate a thousand conversations along the Manhattan grid and stop only for snacks or introspection. We are never sated. Love is a friendship that still grows, still builds, even decades after the novelty has worn off and maybe here is its purest form. When all the rest has burned to the ground, when the lovers have packed up and left, when the art evades is and our children never were, will we not still be here with our fits of laughter and unwavering support in the mire?

One day, I stood in the window of an old electrical substation and looked at my city. The art behind me was overwhelming in its story, present, a reminder of all that New York is and was and how when we have art in our veins we must, we must, we must let it out. But I stood staring at the city instead, at the low, painted rooftops of the east village, at the bits and baubles of neighborhoods cobbled together, at a glittering skyline in the distance I could recite in my sleep, it sits like Braille at my fingertips. It falls and it burns and it closes shop, but though it sloughs off the old like a detached machine, the city is still recognizable in each new version, is still inherently familiar. No matter the window from which I watch it unfold, from which I watch it wink at me, it is always my city, it is always my home.
And when all the rest has burned to the ground, my every breath will whisper its outline into the night, how it will remind me
what
love
is.

March 8

I dated a man in publishing once. He showered me with books like they were flowers; I took every last one, added them in piles to any free space in my tiny room, felt wealthier than any larger apartment ever could make me. We were both poor, had nothing to offer each other, even in metaphor. When we parted I was reluctant only for the impending poverty of my shelves: his gifts had not been enough to buy him my adoration. He seemed to think I owed it.

Today I stood in a used bookstore and breathed in the smell of old riches, let the soft, dusty pages cave at my caress, let the narrow aisles close in on me. I lingered in the discount section - a frigid courtyard wrapped in tarp - until my fingers were numb and my arms full. Thought a life in stories is the only one I can live. 

I do not need a man to give me the stories, though. I make my own goddamned stacks of gold.

Ash

Oh, but the season is malicious, how you freeze to the bone, how your breath turns to ice crystals in your chest, you see the sun but cannot feel it on your skin, what else can I offer as sacrifice? We took the train out of the city to find the flowers but they had all been drowned in the snow: like the death of a child theirs was particularly cruel, how fragile these tender stalks. I look at the forecast again, again, I cry my prayers at its feet, she says it isn't so bad, she says look how bright the sky. I know the finish line draws near, every step now feels impossibly long but it is closer every day, all we have to do is survive. I have lined these walls with poetry, now, they do their best to keep out the cold but don't you see I set them all on fire? Don't you see I grovel now in the ashes of all I broke to endure?

I will stand back up. I will stand back up. It's only I'm so tired. It's only, this snow feels warm if you let it hold you. It's only the earth isn't so hard when it rocks you to sleep. It's only, this rip tide isn't so strong, if you just give in and let it
wash
you
out
to
sea.

But Soft

There's a space
after the fire burned everything to the ground
after you thought you couldn't possibly endure
another step in the dark,
but before the tiny spires in the soil wrap their tendrils around
your lungs and
explode in your blood stream,
when you think you are all right
when you think you are better by the minute,
but in fact you are nothing but
numb
worn down to your bare bones,
and stumbling forward through molasses.

How cruel to know life
and think this is all it is.

Mantra

March arrives in a whirlwind. When the sun shines, it shines without apology: you peel layers of knitwear, walk down the street with your eyes closed and your cheeks turned up like a satellite dish. But the gods are willful, and they throw icy winds and Arctic snowstorms in your path. The weather presenters yell themselves hoarse. I focus on putting one foot in front of the other, one foot in front of the other. Breath, in, breath, out. You are alive and that is enough; you are alive, and that is enough. They close the schools for impending weather and your heart aches for the little buds you saw along the river this morning.

But they have been through worse, and they have endured.

they have been through worse
and they have endured. 

Cast

Late nights in Brooklyn, you know the winding road through the industrial edges, around the projects and the police floodlights over abandoned playgrounds. The air is still, the sky light like when it intends to snow, my breath is loud in the way it gets when winter insulates us, I can read these clouds like I grew up in them. Snow in March, you'd think it was a test if you didn't know the world doesn't care what you make of it. Snow.

I have no use for your self pity now. I have no interest in wallowing. The season for aches and pains is over, I stuffed as much of it into a very small apartment as I could but here's the thing. It's March now and in March I open the windows. In March it all washes away into the ether, rises into the air, the thing is I told you I would survive the season and do you see me now?

A little snowflake can do nothing, to the hurricane I am about to bring.

March On

It arrives when you do not notice, a new month, a new dawn. I walked home along First Avenue, the sky that strange light it gets when it carries snow. A young man with a pizza box in his hand high fived me with his other; the steam stacks stood in the middle of the avenue, unperturbed, painting the city like you knew it from movies. At one a.m. this town is yours and it is all you could have ever dreamed. I had too much wine, we had too much to say, at one a.m. the world is yours and you do not give it back when asked.

A new month has arrived. Everything that fell with the snow is washed away by sunshine. I made this bed with clean sheets, I set the alarm for other time zones. An old month died.

I did not die, with it.