Approach

(you know your outer shell
is a praline
is a thin veneer that breaks
at slightest pressure,
but here's the thing
fuck you I get back up
again
and you can't keep me
down.)

Eves

You look over your calendars, and all these years later the date still stands out. You've forgotten so much of what the world was like then, what the city was like and you barely even knew it. When you first landed, how it was still a smoldering open wound; lately, how it is smooth and clean and the whole city tries to erase that it's ever been hurt, ever been poor, ever been unloved. You preferred its rough edges, its unconventional beauty, its relentless grit, and you wonder why any of us aim for  seamless perfection, that is not what life is.

It occurred to me at the laundromat today that we are, in fact, allowed to live the lives we choose, and not just for now. That love is a choice you make every single day, but if you keep making it, you don't have to let it go. And I love you, New York, as in ridiculous, inconvenient, consuming, can't-live-without-each-other love, and sometimes in a busy Lower East Side laundromat I am reminded that I may not have to, and it is the sweetest gift I ever give myself.

I am not perfect, New York, but I keep choosing you. I think maybe you are the best thing about me now, you with your hidden hurt, your scar tissue and endless ambition, and me with my endless optimism and thinly veiled dreams of magic. If you will only let me, New York, I think I might just choose you until my days run out.

Ash

An entire weekend comes and goes, clawing at your gut, a sense of unease slithering along your the inside of your skin, you do not pay it any mind. There is work to be done, there are drinks to be drunk. You wade through the masses of unknown eyes and walk home in the late night with newfound empty to add to your bowls. A Monday arrives, all promise and quiet hours for weaving your tales, you dive in head first.

It's not until your running shoes reach the bottom of the Brooklyn Bridge, when you've attempted to pound the last of the itch out of you, that it catches up to you in the flesh. The dark cloud over your head turns to pain within your body, you stumble a few feet and wonder if you'll make it home: is that a fever on your brow? Your body decides to yell and scream at you when you will not listen to pleas, you return to your room and collapse for the evening, unsure anymore what it is you are trying to outrun.

Sometimes it is not enough to sit still for a minute. Sometimes we have to fall to the bottom, expel our insides, clean out the messes from our tangled minds, rest in the power of having nothing left to lose. The sun will set, the sun will rise. Tomorrow you can step out of the mud, dust yourself off, and start again. Such is the blessing of another day.

Cling to that. Wake up, again.

Mille-feuille

A ball of fire sits in your gut. He looks at the dark cloud around your head and attempts to wave it away with only truths, what a blessing it is to be seen when you do not want to be. You try to shake the obstacles in your path, but sometimes the best lesson is this: the first step might be,
let it go.

Wreck

Sometimes I get so sad, and I don't know why. Melancholy drapes across me like a blanket weighted with day old rainwater from crosswalk puddles. If this description seems precise, it is because I have had a lot of time to think about it. The bartender scribbles notes at the end of the bar, a cup of tea by her side, perhaps we are all trying to be somebody. Did you know you cannot erase your problems with the naked bodies of people you do not love? They only scuff their edges against your grating skin, you sit on subway trains with bowfuls of empty in the middle of the night and try to sift them for morsels of purpose. You cannot fill the bowls with the touches of people who do not love you. But you're on the express train now, you're no longer sure how to stop.

I went to the bar after work, perhaps I should be more mindful of my health but there's this novel tapping on my shoulder at all hours, there's this sense of impending death leaning over my brow when I wake, perhaps it's only fall with the wet blanket again, I should be used to this routine by now. The bar gets busy. You want a moment's rest. The novel stirs at your side again.


The only answer is work. You couldn't be more grateful for the gift.

Hit

These things always seem to happen in slow motion, don’t they? How the man across the street did not register in your conscious until the car hit him right in the side, lifted him down first street, an array of confused or shocked faces lining the sidewalk. How a day of balloons and birthdays drop from out the soles of your feet and later on the subway you only know how tired you are. He says I saw you get on the subway in my neighborhood this morning, and you don’t know what the Universe is playing at. Perhaps the game is not for you, perhaps you are but a pawn, a disposable plaything to fill a moment of boredom. You give the police officer your phone number, go on your way, leave the borough.

Wait for the city to wash words back into your chest again.

Itch

The bar looks different on a holiday Monday, the crowd filteres out, the bartender turns the lights down, but once you settle into the wooden seat, does it not feel exactly the same? The story, which you have tried so hard to avoid - for hours, for days, for years - dances under your fingertips and everything feels fine. You remember again this is the gift you give yourself: time, dreams, joy, and you think maybe you've cracked some sort of code even though you forget so often. Your roommate sends pictures from Hawaii, but you stood at the airport this weekend and thought there is nowhere else I'd rather be, so she can have it. Summer ends, September sweeps in and tries to break your heart but you're not sure there's much there left to break and maybe September can have it. I love you in ways I cannot explain and for this short moment I don't need to, let me have it. Last week I stood at the top of the Empire State Building and let my heart beat again in the magic just of being here, just of owning a few mad streets of this jumble. How easily we forget (and yet how easily it all comes back to us). I owe this little town everything, and what a gift that debt is, alone.

Because debt means we are still tied together New York. I hope I will owe you my every happiness, forever. It doesn't seem hard, to do.