Norouz

The night before, I lie giddy in bed attempting sleep. A full moon travels across the night sky. Dressed up kids flock to the synagogue nearby, a young girl tells us this is the synagogue for Purim and she looks like she knows what she’s talking about. A pink feather boa trails her. When morning arrives with droves of rain I think the city washes winter away. I pull out my mop, my latex gloves, I scrub every corner of the apartment and flood it with flowers instead. I drink champagne for breakfast. Piles of garbage and Salvation Army donations grow by the door, I am lighter, lighter, I am light. At the foot of a few objects, I hesitate. Out with the old, a voice whispers in my ear and I nod, yes, but I don’t want this to be old, that’s the problem. I fold the pieces back up, feel the weight in my chest again. I carry it like a dull ache through the days, wonder if I even remember who I am without it. 

In the morning I meditated so deeply I both laughed and cried in the same breath. Opened my eyes to see New York brick greet me, to see streets and lights and buildings and sounds that tell me I’m home. I felt sunshine explode within me and every cell in my body tingle. 

We may be limping. 

But by god, we made it out alive. 

Strung

The sunshine is relentless, lately, it beams at every turn, it wakes me in the morning and lingers into the evening. My pale winter cheeks flush, I unzip jackets and walk eyes closed down Broadway, how sweet the world can be after all this cold, after all this rejection and abandonment. I'm hesitant to believe it, like a shivering baby giraffe, unsure of the strength of my own limbs. I squint at the sunlight and test a smile, try on a deep breath for size, feel the fireworks build up in my chest but scared, so scared that it's only a ruse, that the avalanche will return and bury me again.

It took so much work just to survive. I just don't know yet if I'm ready to learn the motions,
again,
of how it is to live.

Loft

The bar is perfect on Mondays, quiet and dark. It weaves tales along your fingertips, the piles of paper amass at your side, as the glass empties in tandem. The bartender is new but everything else is old enough to make amends. The words toss and turn between elation and despair, my heart weeps and giggles in one breath, how is there sunshine in my chest while still everything hurts?

Oh but such is life. We do as best we can with the cards we've been given. Just because you wish they looked different, doesn't mean you can't be curious about the ones you have.

When I leave the bar in the early evening, dusk still lingers above the tenements. Unused words tumble out of my coat pockets, follow me home, skip into the avenues. We have far to go.

But at least, at last, we're walking.

Avalanches

Blank page, blank days, sometimes I think there's a blank expression on my face but it's only a front, you must know that by now, it's all a mirage. When I walked into that bar that night, when we sat at the edge of the ocean and felt the weight of everything, when you slept a long quiet night without nightmares, that was real. He says it's in your eyes, softly, but I know what's there and it doesn't mean a thing. I'm a writer, you know, I can make all of this up and you wouldn't know: that's the beauty of art.

The ground thaws more by the day now, I stop along the river to photograph every new flower. I don't know what I'll use the pictures for. Perhaps I'm trying to gather the riches, to never lose them. But the truth is you can lose anything and nothing can be done about it. The ground thaws more by the day, and the glacier in my chest with it. How sweet to breathe, to run my fingers along my skin and feel it again, to remember joy, remember hope. And yet, with the spring floods come every other emotion hidden in ice, comes every sad memory, every shard of abandoned excitement, every scar my body built just to survive. I know these wounds are mine, and mine alone.

So I keep the flowers close. Pad the wounds with petals that won't last the month.

The truth is,
You wake up with yourself. 

Kinetic

I know it has happened before I've even opened my eyes. There's a hum in the air, a buzz near my temples, there's a smile on my lips that stretches with the late morning sunlight. Spring has arrived.

The day is warm, warmer than it should be; I don't care, it is perfect. I run sweating to connecting trains, land in a quiet garden with cherry trees still sleeping, watch the brown earth lie still in anticipation. The entrance is pompous later in the year, built for show, I know its tricks, this is not why I'm here. Wander down a small path on the side, arrive at undulating lawns and steady tree trunks. There, hesitant at first, one by one little flowers appear, before spreading into a sea of color. Waves of purple crocus, little fireworks of aconite and snowdrops, soft rounds of hellebore, it's all I can do to keep from throwing myself in their midst and going for a swim. The sun breaks out, birds go wild, when I cannot help but smile, people cannot help but smile in return, it is a dream, only because we know it is real.

I sat on a bench later, basking in the sunlight, watching children play among the flowers, and thought, I survived, and realized in that instant it was true. It's over now, all the death and destruction and hollow weight inside my inert body, it is over. It is time to dust myself off, pick up all the pieces that were left waiting, an entire life of beauty and truth and strength in the making, they are all still here. A tattered book sits at the top of my backpack, whispers of the road and the world and all the madness I have yet to discover, and after months of feeling nothing but illiterate, I look at it now and think yes, I'm coming, and know that it is true.

Arrivals

So many flights come and go, you lose track of the tears in your heart. Spend your evenings mending them like stockings; you were always terrible in home ec but at least with age you've learned how to do a passable job. I woke with a start in the middle of the night and remembered all the lines on my face, all the wrinkles on the map of the world, I remembered every truth I had ever learned and wished I could forget for a minute, if only long enough to fall asleep. The lights were on, my clothes still wrapped around my body, these things happen, I had been so cold and now the radiator sprints toward its extinction. He writes, you sound like disaster with flushed cheeks and I recognize the tremble in his voice so well, feel in my fingertips the ease with which I could pull out my arsenal. I thought we weren't doing that anymore, a voice whispers somewhere in the top left corner of your chest, as I take a step back and look for alternatives. Hangovers always pull honesty out of me like a cure. Like this pokerface has a hard time keeping up when the makeup rubs off on the pillow. I leave his message on read and stare out the window instead.

You know the way people look at you, that mix of affection and bittersweet joy, the moment they know is the last before they have to break you?

That question is rhetorical.

Things Could Be Stranger

The hours while away, I'm unsure after the fact where they went. The hours, the days, the weeks pass and spring approaches, how far it seemed just a while ago, wasn't I just dying? The radiator in my room runs rampant: a winter of freezing and suddenly everything is tropical. The bed is empty again, the vacation over. In the park this morning, the flowerbeds were full of snowdrops and aconite, little winks from the earth that everything would be okay. I know how to breathe again.

But as the snow melts, as the hard ground turns soggy with thaw, as everything returns, do not your memories, your feelings, all the things you hid in permafrost, everything you resigned to the death of the season? I remember days of daffodils past, remember how many days I sat with daggers, trying to remember the joy of blossoms. Remember how cruel it seemed to ruin such a beautiful gift with tears, with all the broken blood that ran across its pages.

And yet.

And yet.

How each spring begins anew; how the buds of this year do not remember the blossoms of years before. How once again, winter killed you.

How spring brought you life anew.