Mi Tierra

August rolls in, fat, yellow August with its hot days and dark nights. You forget to remember the days, spending every morning with your toes in the sand and your afternoons in a fervor by the word processor, aching out twists and turns in the story because soon it must be finished soon, you must expel this sweat to the world. A little girl runs across your pages, but she is not the only one: you see your demons run themselves tired through your ink-stained veins.

We went to Coney Island to see American summer up close. I reveled in a cool breeze, in a short break from the inner madness, but the truth is there is no reprieve. The truth is blinking lights can’t erase the darkness from your heart, the truth is saving everyone else can’t save you from yourself, soon it’s 37 years of your stumbling and are you ever going to walk on that balance beam without bruises?

The Q arrives when you need it to, arcs along the bridge to Manhattan and runs local when your stop isn’t express, it’s a soft kindness to your hard exterior. You sink into the warm embrace of your borough, into the knowledge that however lost you may be, you can always come back home, that you are never so alone that fourth street will not walk beside you. Your demons sit by the bedside, waiting. It’s time to rewrite this story. Give them a place, and then
let them
go.

Retrograde

A month comes and leaves in an rain storm, a new moon rises in its wake. They say things will be better now but you think they’ve been pretty good all along, in the grand scheme of things. He writes to say pick a date, I’ll buy the ticket, and you marvel at what a life you’ve built around yourself. She calls you mid cycle at the laundromat and lures you out for a drink, there’s a monsoon flooding the avenue but no matter. She nestled an entire family into your bloodstream by pretending you could get out at any time and now here you are, never wanting to leave. You think perhaps that’s the trick to loving you, and she had it right all along. New York waved noncommittally in your direction and you felt safe to love it completely. She calls August the Sunday of the season, but you are not ready to give up yet, not ready to lull yourself into the long sleep of fall. Google tickets to the ends of the earth.

Wonder who it is you’d like yourself to be.

Love Letters

Again, again, how many days and weeks and years can it still feel so new, so sweet, how long can I love you like this they didn't tell me this was ever how it could be. I ran down the west side at sunset today, past the throngs of summer dresses and carefree strollers, crossed Washington Square Park with boys holding hands and women in hijabs, the Empire State Building behind them and all the skyscrapers painted in that velvety blue light of sweltering summer evenings. Again, again, the crooked piles of brick buildings, the hum of the avenues, aligned my senses and recalibrated my insides until everything felt just right. Again, again I thought I love this place more than I knew I knew how to love anything and it's been thirteen years don't you dare tell me that shit's not for real. 

New York, my love, it turns out you - in all your madness - are the one thing that makes me sane. That I have found a place that brings me peace, that I have found a place where all my crooked pieces fit into a whole. New York you make me think that finding love is really just finally coming home. 

East 5th Street

You don’t know how long you've been away, it feels like years and minutes all at once. The bartender still knows your order before you’ve even sat your bag down. Her boyfriend arrives later with presents; they share a quiet sweet moment at the short end of the bar and you feel stray daggers in your chest despite yourself. A loud man at the table next to you tells the women he’s with what they’re doing wrong and his loud laugh grates at you, what you wouldn’t give to decimate his kind but yes sure, he also has his good moments. You are not that great all the time, don’t forget.

I sat in the windowless office earlier, with the weight of too many weeks on my lungs. He tries a hundred different ways to lift them from you, how grateful you are for the lifeline, but in the end I know the answer, I just need to hear it repeated sometimes. The answer is always work, the answer is do the thing, the answer is put one god damned foot in front of the other because it is the only way to get anywhere at all and the secret is you want to get everywhere before it’s over. You cancel dates and sit at the bar smiling. A small girl sits next to you, eager to read the next chapter, eager for you to take the both of you into a better future. You feel her little hand in yours, even as it is weightless. This life is bigger than you now, it is bigger than you know but you’re getting a sense. You waver sometimes, you are bound to.

But I know where it is I’m going. And no matter how I get there, the point is that
I will.

Things I Have Loved (I'm Allowed to Keep)

A mad race begins without announcement, you are on the conveyor belt before you've even thought about running. Still packed bags pile on top of each other, the corners of my room are all drifts of sand, I don't know the last time I sat still in this room and remembered my name. But a Sunday afternoon arrives at last, all silent telephone quiet sunlight peace, little whirls of dust settling on every surface, headphones full of beat poets, head full of fantasy, and here you are again. The little voice inside your chest stretches her limbs and tests her range, the big synapses in your brain fire off mad ideas into the quiet afternoon, you recognize everything that bleeds on to the ticker tape and you can only hum in agreement. A small candle flickers in your coat pocket; it looks different now, but then, so do you, and perhaps that is all right. You hold what you've lost in one hand and what you've gained in the other, trying to gauge if they balance out. But in the back of your mind, another song repeats, louder and louder, until you forgot the burdens you carry:

Nothing matters, 
but the words you leave behind.


Monday morning arrives, an empty to do list awaits instructions. You are here now.

Get back to work.

Ocean Grove

The Atlantic Ocean is wild, raging against shore and tumbling in salty somersaults; the beach is full and bears no resemblance to the quiet afternoon before. I stood at the edge of the thrashing waves and remembered a summer looking to the sea for answers: now I have no questions, no storms within to quell, and I had forgotten, I think, what that was like. My skin is pale like April, it pinks and browns in ripples and I allow whatever changes come, because summer sits securely fastened to my senses now, radiates in my muscles and lulls me to safety. We drink wine out of thermos flasks and pull up our chairs every time the tide moves higher, all of August still lies ahead of us and sometimes I think we’ll all be okay.

Hold tightly to the gifts you are given. Relish them, let your fingers get pruny in their delights. When winter comes you may need them. And now you know how to lean into their sunshine, when you do.

The Hydrants are Open

Find them in the early morning, pack tents and water bottles, extra sunscreen and giggles, tumble out onto a quiet Greenwich beach, the tide is low and we collect shimmering shells all the way out to sea. Manhattan lies hazy in the distance, like a mirage in the desert and you already miss it. My pale skin pulsates against the sun, for a short moment I breathe without reminders, the water is cool and I am as close to happy as perhaps I can get these days. On the train home I read stories from a year ago, a July of browner skin but a veritable black hole inside it. My words are better in anguish, I declare, but it seems a frail victory. The truth is I’ve pulled myself back from a pit so deep I didn’t know I’d ever see a sunrise again, the truth is I’ve skinned every part of my body trying to climb out of it and had I known how close to the bottom of Everything I was I would never have made it.

I don’t know where I stand now. I know my accent lilts to the lower east side, I know my feet walk in poetry and this smile is made of starlight and magic. But I know my sleep is restless, and my eyes are forever a little broken, even though you can only see that if you really look for it. Maybe I think I’m back on steady ground but I’ve made a nook halfway up the pit and think as long as I can breathe I’m content.

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, they say.

Maybe what constitutes alive is subjective, though.