But I Can Go On

(and the words, 
that keep ringing in my ear:
Curiosity is the antidote
to fear.)

Dual (sic)

September appeases you with sunshine, like an apology, like it knows you know what it's there for, but it would like to soften the blow. We walk through the park and I think it's a lovely day for the beach but in my apartment we have already stowed away the picnic blankets. How life is cruel, when you are always one step behind it. My body aches, yells at me about children unmade, another month wasted and here's how we are made to suffer for the choices we did not make.

But I sit at this desk, again, cool air streaming in from an open window, piles of magic strewn around me on bits of paper, the space around me expanding with possibility and story. It's not that I didn't make choices, it's that I made strange, curious, fantastical choices that do not fit easily into properly labeled boxes and sometimes that's bound to chafe at your sides, but believe me: when you let yourself settle in and get comfortable in the box you chose, how much it looks like an entire Universe.

How much it looks like you gave yourself the stars.

Apex

The thing about storms is, they always pass. They always move on to some other green grass and leave you to wring out your socks and wonder what happened. The morning after it leaves, my body feels like the first day after a great illness is over, like I can taste the flavor of food again, like I can take deep breaths without an ache in my side and my skin no longer crawls when I touch it. The face in the mirror looks familiar.

The aftermath of a hurricane is always absence. The silence is a relief.

I walked down the west side, late season hues of oranges and pinks, the Hudson River glittering under clear skies and all the world like old friends. Turned in to remnants of rush hour traffic around the Lincoln Center and thought, I love every corner of this ridiculous city, as I stepped down Broadway and caught a train. 57 blocks south I unearthed on the same street and saw the Woolworth building anotheer 25 down, disappearing slowly under deep blue velvet twilight. I nodded in agreement with myself.

The relief of silence is a gift. The absence of illness, of the hurricane, is a brief moment to see your Self as open to filling only with that which you like. It's always there, even when you believe it's been drowned. If I can go to New York, live madly, and write, 

I will want for nothing. 

Re:volt

The entire day comes and goes in waves of uselessness, in fogs you thought had long since lifted and burdens the size of boulders on your chest. You swear you know how to breathe but the mechanics evade you. Morning in Brooklyn was cold, but the afternoon sun beats down on your southfacing windows and you cannot reconcile your autumn tears with the stubborn summer outside. this was always who you were, a quiet voice whispers as you attempt to bury yourself in apathy and a few invisible blades against your clammy skin. everything else was respite.

I open my eyes again, fill them with words and poetry and magic, drag myself far enough out of the sludge and into the sunlight that at least I can fill my lungs with air, the only answer is work and the only answer is the word and the only word I had was "wow", do you see how you had the pot at the end of the rainbow in your hands all along, do you see how we have nothing to fear?

I sit back down at the word processor, counting my minutes like pennies. I am unafraid now:

this blank page breathes for me.

Arrival

Journal entries and scraps of paper on my desk swim in delusion. Scribbles of a mad Universe clutter the pages, how they feel like home. I ask myself how to recover the magic I've lost to reality, it's a cruel trick of the light, you see the mortgages and required hustle playbooks stack themselves in your line of sight, and it gets too hard to see the world you had painted for yourself before. Do you remember there was a time when everything was oil paints and fireworks, when life was not a straight line but a dance, an endless wave you were riding and you believed you had found the Answer?

Just because they don't dream in color doesn't mean you weren't right to.

Re:minders

Sunday night full moon
in the east village
And the reminder that
Family
is not what you were born into
It is the love you choose.

Play Tag

Quiet afternoons in an empty office, you relish the refuge and wonder at your life. Scribble handwritten notes on a pad, saying it's just now that I know different, it's hard to go back to baseline. Realize that your whole life you've had the sad eyes, the heavy heart, and when you feared those breaks were temporary, you were right.

Maybe this is it, my love, maybe you and I are destined to walk together through this life and I shouldn't try so hard to leave you behind. Here, why don't you step up. Here, why don't you hold my hand, I am not afraid of you anymore, don't you see? If I cannot leave you behind, I have nothing left to lose. I give in to this, now, I give in to you. Come, let's move on.

Come, we have the remainder of a life to live.