Movement

Monday morning, everything is already happening and didn’t stop to wait while you were away. The west village is a postcard, as always, but the white washed loafered conversation grates along your empty bank account, your tumbles in class. You long for the blend you know is here, you long for mosaic and the calm that only the madness of this city can provide. Everything that tore at my heart suddenly feels far away, I forget I ever cried. 

That’s the thing, you know. No matter how many tears we cry, no matter how impossible it feels to ever smile again, you put one foot in front of the other, eventually you smile again, eventually you make your way home. 

Knickerbocker

Summer nights in Brooklyn, you see threads you lost years ago waiting for you among unknown streets and you try to pick them back up with your newfound fine motor skills, the payoff is reassuring. Wander down streets yet unmarred by cynicism, by the big city, and wonder what your feet would look like on their pavement, wonder how you’d sleep in their lullabies. She says oh you only ever talk about moving, I don’t believe it, and you can’t yet tell if she is right. No one seems to know what they are doing,  anyway. The party was so many balloons on the ceiling, the guest of honor got locked out at one in the morning and there isn’t a metaphor in there, only the lesson that life is ridiculous and we’ll do best to always laugh at it. I thought I had answers, but I’m only winging it too, but maybe we can wing it together, all I’m saying is I like you. We are already knee deep in summer, but I’m not worried, it hasn’t been many minutes since I sat crying on a train on the other side of the world and it doesn’t mean a thing really. The point is tonight I watched the sun set in peach and cicada song over Manhattan and I could only remember the things that made me happy, what more could I ask
but that?

I Can Be Your Long-Lost

Immigrations at JFK is a maze of unanswered questions and time spent staring at walls, feeling guilty over nothing and wondering if the way you fold your arms looks suspicious. Do you know I had feelings once so strong I thought they’d devour you, and nothing that happened after proved me wrong.

Outside the arrivals doors, though, the air was mild, immensely humid, my hair curled like a yawn but everything was perfect somehow. The street smelled like the sea. Late night riders on the A train reminded me what this place is: the skinny, unruly guys up front chatting for the whole car to hear, the tired old man, the person of unclear gender and enviable hair taking selfies in the corner, a young girl yelling into her phone every time we got reception at the subway stations. Across the platform, crews scrubbed down Kingston-Throop ave: someone has to do that, too. Voices travel across my screen: are you home yet? A quirky tag on my luggage reads we all have our baggage. I’ve stared mine in the eyes this week. I have seen the chasms of my past and a person I’d rather not see. And maybe that’s the whole point. Baggage serves a purpose. 

When you no longer need it, you simply empty it out

and let it go. 

Redan Innan

Overwhelmed isn't the half of it. I forget to breathe, I forget that an entire world waits for me at the other end of this ocean, this life is too large, too long, too impossible to endure without closing doors and never looking back. If you carry every day, every person, every bittersweet summer night in your arms you will sink, you will never be able to say your farewells, you said too many for a while and now you won't do it anymore. I packed up the remains of a life and stowed it away safely with someone whose voice is etched into the side of my spine, and when the time came for the train to leave, there was nothing left but the bag on my back. We rolled slowly out of the little town, rocked gently past the bike path and lakes of my youth, houses where I've lived and loved, dialects I didn't learn until I left them. On my last run in the early morning, I curved around a little island in the river to see the old stone bridge; rumor has it its architect jumped from the bridge to his death for lack of faith in it, but 200 years later there's a lesson in there I can't quite place my finger on. I finished the run with a whole new book in my head, and isn't that the gift after all: to take this tangled mess of every life lived, and create something new, something whole. We heal ourselves as best we can.

I carry five generations of my people in this bag, see their hopes and dreams and monotonous routines reduced to a few precious pieces in my life. Still they remain, and their stories in my chest. I carry them across the world, did they know? Could they guess? When they looked at their life what did they think was the point? At the edge of the river lies an island that knows my name when I forget it myself. This life is too large, too long, too impossible, but hell if I won't carry it to the ends of the earth, hell if I won't live an entire life and ride this wave to shore.

Piragua

Late nights
Long days
Long lives
Condensed into so few boxes they
Mean more now because someone you
Love
Holds them
In our absence

Just like they
Held you
For so many years
And you didn’t realize

There was a moment tonight
When I did not know where they
Ended
And I began
And I think that’s the point of the
Whole thing.

Closer to Fine

And then, here it is. The day you’ve dreaded, when all the loose ends of your vagabond life must be tied together, stowed nearly away and paid for with money you have no idea how you’ll manage to find. Moments of your youth appear in boxes, neatly wrapped crystal the stories of which you’ve been hearing for years, and that vase is only for light pink carnations in the spring. I devour it whole, every last thread that weaves me into a family tree, that tells me a story into which I fit. I forgot, for a while, who I was.

But we sat last night on their couch, snuggled tight into the stories of our loyalty, and I remember: they gave me family, when I had none. When I ran, they waited patiently on the shore and pulled me in when I washed up, ragged and lost and hungry, they did not ask questions. And here we were, on a couch in a town I know by heart, the late night light with midsummer anticipation, weaving our tales again like we do not exist without these decades in our skin. I slept well then.

Perhaps all these things will one day burn to the ground. But the family you choose, and which chooses you, that is what you came for, even when
you didn’t know.

Entropy

The local bus meanders through a sleepy South Island, this is the old folks’ bus it stops everywhere and leaves no stone unturned. It reads like a memoir of your years on its streets, it speaks of an entire life that sat in your bones a lifetime ago. Here is the first apartment you saw and didn’t get, here is where you stood disoriented outside the train and wondered which way was up, literally too, here is where you stood for hours in the late summer twilight and felt nothing under his touch. Here is the park bench I walked past one penniless Wednesday afternoon and thought maybe I make this a home, instead, and I wondered if that was what rock bottom looked like. It’s a beautiful town. But maybe love is not enough to build a life. Isn’t that what these lessons were trying to teach you?

The bus arrives on a small island in the inner city strait. A moving van appears, expectant faces and a fresh start. Promises of new stories to write, the makings of a life after love proved flawed. I drag my bag past their symbolism, wave furiously but do not stay. There are too many manuscripts in your drafts folder. Which Story would you like to tell at last?