and No Surprises

Down under the Manhattan bridge, on cobblestone streets late at night when no one is there, you can have a moment that does not self publish on social media sprawls, that does not crop itself into perfect angles for anyone’s enjoyment, that is only there for you to remember. 

When they ask me, fifty years from now, what I remember, please know this: I will say it was you. 

Phooey

It's not how long it takes you to get there,
it's that you get there at all.

I lied when I said I was okay,
I'm sorry.
I'm still a work in progress and
these puzzle pieces fall
so haphazardly even
when I try to direct them

I'm working on
it. 

Story

Well I mean, L.A. is so easy, the greying men at the table next to me repeat, in the midst of recounting how work is going and how their children are doing. He's dating a lovely girl now, but since I last saw you he's had three jobs, I don't know what he's doing. Monday bar on a Thursday, I am wrapped in the season's first tights, I'm swathed in a sweater and somehow impossibly October appeared out of the July that was yesterday, everything is topsy turvy. My phone autocorrects it to tipsy turbo,  and I am loath to change it.

The cherry blossom tracker on said phone morphs into a fall foliage map, washing the screeen in fiery shades and cozy exclamations. At last the waves line up and I see a life make sense: this is what it is to be human, this is what it is to be you. You fight so hard against the demons instead of seeing how much they look like you, how much they could help you tell someone else their story. You spread out in your usual corner of the bar, piles of paper and empty glasses, you think of what home is and how the only thing that matters is that when you are homeless there is only survival and when everything lines up you can think straight, and maybe I do think more about the weather than most but don't you know? A maple on fire can change your life just like a wave at Rockaway beach, the point is we are insignificant specks in the Universe and so you owe it to yourself to
live this life as
goddamn much
as you possibly can. 

Let the River

I woke with the stirrings of a dark cloud in my belly again; it lingers always now, ready to move at any sign of weakened defenses. The dog by my feet did not stir, she is too old now to worry about any of this, what does she owe life. I struggled through morning tasks and paperwork at my feet, while the temperature rose and rose outside, the streets growing muggy in confusion: tomorrow it will be cold, they say, tomorrow this will all be over. There was summer still, right outside these strangers’ window there was sunshine and warmth and I decided if I could do only one thing of worth this might be the best. I ran to the train, I ran to a dozen trains, everything is so far when you long for it but suddenly I spilled out onto a bright sunny boardwalk in queens and when I saw the ocean, would you believe I cried. How can I write what I know when I am all questions, I wrote in a poem once, but do you know, I’m starting to think I am a lot of answers, I just haven’t been paying attention. How long I have spent homeless, how long I have spent searching for that which will hold me, how long I have tried to hold myself, spinning into infinity with nothing in my hands but grains of sand and castles of my own delusions?

I know what home is, now. I know the trick to sleeping soundly at night.

You can’t tell me that the breath of summer isn’t worth something in the depths of fall.

Tiny Love

The movie stuffs itself with clichéed sweeps of Manhattan in the 80s, yuppied conversations and obscene haristyles, but your eyes are trained now, they see only familiar streets and dear skylines. You absorb every scene, smile in every margin. I write I think you'd like this movie and he says I already do.The dog is blind, and deaf, but she hobbles her way up on the couch and we spend a quiet moment contemplating nothing.

You can do all the thinking you want, you can write lists and ask the advice of strangers in the street. But eventually you'll sit in a moment that catches you by surprise and puts the answer right in your chest. I'm not saying New York has all the answers.

It's just that every time it does, you've done so right to listen.

in the Sky

The day after is always cruel in its indifference. The last of the alcohol seeps out and leaves only gutter leaves, only muck and confusion. I ran along the river and tried to sweat it out, but one last heavy weight lingered on my brow. I went to Brooklyn, ostensibly to get work done but wanting really only to sit in a window and look at the city, let it heal me. A small dog curled up in the curve of my arm. I thought alright then, and it was. A small girl waits patiently at the end of the cursor, asks nothing of me that I do not give willingly.

The truth is I want to give her the world.

I don't know why I don't.

Belleville

People come for the cherry blossoms, she tells us. We’re booked through 2021. At the mention of cherry blossoms suddenly I see only fall foliage, only shades of fire and the possibility that maybe autumn isn’t death, that maybe things live because we want them to. That maybe I can look at this ink blot from another angle and paint another image inside my eyelids. Here’s my happy little accident. I wore a scent of 2017 on my skin, of tour buses and freedom, it drifted across my awareness at the strangest moments but it felt safe, comforting, steadfast.

We stood on the street corner for hours, until the air grew cold and my shoulders shivered. The Empire State went to sleep behind us, and I thought how this building has kept watch over me for so many years, unwavering, reliable, reassuring. How this building reminded me what home is. I know you don’t know all the answers.

Just rest a while. When you have found home, dare to believe it will know them for you.