Terminal B

How often have I walked these exact steps, maneuvered this giant suitcase, schlepped up and down dirty, dusty, smelly New York stairs, sailed in and out of trains and shuttles, I know the exact smell of the terminal carpets, the familiar sense of being in transit, is this what home is? Seems as likely as anything. He calls from across the river and suddenly the world is smaller again, how it expands and softens with every breath you take keeping track of loved ones, do they know they made your heart grow to reach the whole world? She writes from across the ocean and revels in disappearing time zones, when I look at the Manhattan skyline from the airport there’s a twinge in my chest where the joy should be. How after all these years I fear every departure could actually be for real.

That’s the thing about home. I fight so hard to find it, I am reluctant to ever let it go. And I still wish you would be the home I carried with me always

regardless the land under my feet.

Approach

Everything draws closer, you feel the itch of tickets in your backpocket, how they delight and distract you. At every turn there is a message, or a plan, your calendar spills over and your suitcase buckles under the weight of silly gifts and heavy expectations. A small girl tugs at your skirt hem from the edge of her page, you both fear the departure and what it might mean. You have left and lost too many loves to endure it again, it is best to hold tight and you know it. For a minute, my heart leapt in my chest, but I hold on to it, restrain it to its rib cage: I have left and lost too many loves to endure it again, please just let me rest for a minute before I try.

Everything draws closer, everyone comes home in summer, there's a bead of sweat in the small of my back, there's a scar now where your lips used to rest, I fill this suitcase because the pit of my stomach is empty and I will not rest until I have filled it with magic.

Lykke

Manhattan swelters, here summer arrives at last and it is as brutal as you had tried to forget, everything is a blurred edge, your skin included. They write from across the world and revel in the season; we survived the dark and we earned this -- no one works. My phone is a steady stream of bare feet by the ocean, of simple dinners on boats and long, slow sunsets over the city: the ache in my chest returns, of a home I have forgotten lives in me. I ran along the river later, the early sunset washing Williamsburg skyscrapers in peaches and blues like they knew nothing of other shores and didn't care to. Underneath the Brooklyn Bridge, I stopped to rest in the view, to hear the city beat its steady rhythm along my temples. A bag packs itself in my periphery. A melancholy joy builds in my chest. 

We cannot escape everything we are. 

But Soft

Early mornings in Brooklyn, I spend an entire cup of coffee trying to talk myself out of the effort, I am tired. My to do list grows, unwieldy, it expands into cracks of empty space and laughs at my attempts of early bed times. You can sleep when it is winter. The cup of coffee empties, a manuscript full of post-its beckons in my bag. I walk out the door before the neighborhood wakes; the June air is sweet with jasmine and potential, one day I asked the universe for a chance to fail up and it seems after so much failing, it is at last time for the up. These are gifts I give myself.

I do not have to give them back.

Pause

But what’s the best way to do it? She asks, exasperated. How do I know if I’m doing it right? A lifetime of perfectionism deep in her bones, she doesn’t remember how to find something for which to be grateful. I’m just afraid that if I think of something good, I’ll instantly remember all the bad and how anything can be snatched away from us at a whim.

I wrote my list without expectation, saw drunk scribbles from a night before and laughed at how often sunshine repeated. It’s only weather, yet here it is etched in ink, over and over and over. My heart swells thinking of a stranger's smile, a lucky turn of events, witnessing sweet winks from the city between its citizens. I go to bed too late, too tired, yet I do not mind the fast approaching alarms. When I look back on this day a year from now, do think maybe I’ll just write this day on my list, and that will be enough?

Threats

Eleven hours later, we wear down the working class one tired body at a time, this was not what your parents had in mind when they tried to give you Everything. But you drag your weary bones back to your Monday bar, and find your bartender has returned. I went to Korea! she smiles as she pours your regular. I always come back! You tip her like the dollar bills are love. The couple next to you fight dirty, he threatens to leave, she cries. When he stays she cuts him. You grow drunk between piles of papers, it’s a gift and you know to recognize it.

Late at night, he cries across the long distance line from palm trees and lonely lawns. You don’t know how to explain that life means breaking and breaking but that the point is you build yourself up again and you are stronger now than you ever were before, yes, but also do you see how brightly your flowers bloom? They know now the value of mortality, of vulnerability, of one tough rainstorm at the peak of their blossom. You wish you could carry the tears of every one you love but they are not your sorrows to bear. But have no doubt.

Wherever you go, however you stumble, I am always only half a step away, have no doubt.

Wherever I go, I always come back.

Maybe

Instant rain, a flash flood warning and canvas shoes floating off down the streets, everyone is caught by the same surprise and with a sunset this glorious we have to only laugh. The alarm clock glares at me as the hours while away, I prepare my piles and control the fallout: a number counts down on my wrist. Who will you be when nothing remains? 

Sunday mornings were made for lazy breakfasts and minibar vodkas, we stare into the sun and reminisce about the East Village like we put in the time and I try to forget my search history of other boroughs' apartment listings. She says your name like you are family, it is a gift, but you put in the time there too and that kind of love knows no infidelity. I sat in a factory window later, watching the summer evening play across the entire city, and I wondered how I could ever have been so lucky to call it home, to feel it in my bones that it is mine. One day you will feel love like this and you'll wonder how you ever settled for anything else. 

Oh

how I hope one day

you will.