Honestly,

A bright pink post it note on my computer keyboard reads don't be precious, and I drag the processor across the village to cram words into it at every turn. The bartender hands me my drink as I walk in, I forget that I do not live here, you could have fooled me. In my youth I manically raced into change before it ran me over, but now I revel in the routines, breathe easier in familiarity. They ridicule me for the post its and printed sheets of paper but a story isn't real unless I can feel it, unless I can run my fingertips across the ink and imagine it in edits, I told a story once and it had potential but I want it to have magic so here I am. He asks to read it, you say only yes now, whoever said we cannot change was only too sad to see the beauty of another sunrise.

She tells me she is leaving her husband. After 30 years together she has at last had enough. He'll find someone new, good for him. She beams at her newfound freedom, spends her days looking at designer sofas. I brought it up before, of course, but he never wanted one. We laugh like girlfriends in a romantic comedy, sometimes life is light when you do not think it would be. I ran for miles and miles along the river today, the air was mild and kind like in springtime, and I thought, well it isn't long until it is here, and I can wait, somehow believing my words as they beat out of me with each deep breath. I don't recognize the skin at my fingertips but my face in the mirror is reassuring. The bar gets busy. My story sways but stays steady, I lose my sense of time, I forget to hear the conversations around me, all I know is there are piles of paper around me that are slowly, slowly, arranging themselves like I hoped they might, it took me years of pain to become the person these pages needed me to be but I am here now.

I'm not going anywhere until this story is told.

I'm not going anywhere until this story is spun in magic.

Cosmos

Days race past you in hours clocked in and not many clocked out. Nights are short and moments to process few, but you pay your bills and when an hour appears among friends, you drink the wine: everything is weightless. I went for a run along the river at sunset, the Bay on fire and a full moon twinkling over Brooklyn. It was not fast, or particularly long, my breath slow and steady, mind unoccupied; I lifted my head like I so rarely remember, looked at the oily blues of the water, the shifting colors of twilight, the familiar, reassuring outline of New York City in every direction. I was happy.

Sometimes we do not win in extravagance. Sometimes it is slow, and steady, and remembering to keep your head up. Sometimes it is just putting one foot in front of the other, and in every step, being
exactly
where you
are.

Treasures Untold

Poetry is useless if you're talking about yourself, he rants into the dark apartment. No one cares that you're a drunk. Piles of my self-revolving whisky rants blush in their corners, but what else can they do? They have nothing to say except what they know. Winter arrives in a rage, suddenly every street corner is an assault. I don't recognize the skin at my fingertips anymore but my face in the mirror is reassuring. You got off track for a minute.

But sheets of paper don't lie, when people tell you who they are believe them, when November hits you cannot reasonably be surprised at winter winds, my alarm is set for far too early but my bills are paid, the Universe will not take without giving something in return.

The Universe will not give, without taking something when it goes.  

Clearly Now

Morning is crisp, like ad agency copy crisp, like images of biting into apples at orchards upstate crisp, the air is cool but the sunshine warm, a large, soft scarf neither too warm nor too cold. The French man behind the register is  his usual manic self, blasting Magic Flute arias and tossing out pastries like a hurricane. Sunrise shone down the Brooklyn street like a joke, like we all know it's not supposed to look like this in real life and yet here we are. I went to bed happy last night.

There's a lightness in November that always surprises me. Like I've finally given up my grasp on summer, have consented to the changing season and can embrace the creative solitude it affords me. I sit in this space now, with a heart that bleeds ink, sit in this dark and create my own goddamn sunshine. It will pass soon enough.

The leaves will all have fallen. But let's cross that bridge when it pummels our way.

El

The bright new building sidles up to the park avenue wall. Street level it’s all masonry, but on the 15th floor you can hear the northbound commuter trains rumble by. I sit in the window and watch them race out of the tunnel and into the fresh air, look in through the window at late night passengers, wonder where they get off and what life looks like there. How quiet the train cars look. Midtown Manhattan sparkles like so many gemstones at the bottom of a dark lake: do you know this city is actually a hundred, each one a world away from the other. The 6 train winds through twenty at least before I reach those blocks of low buildings where I am home. People filter in and out, and I don’t know how to tell them what a miracle it is that they are alive, that all this magic coursing through our veins truly belongs to us, did they remember to look this gift in the eye and did they whisper thank you to the universe? We ride past the ghost stop on 18th street that you have to know about to see, spirits of old New Yorkers long gone lingering by the graffiti, waiting for their ride. I whisper thank you and it sounds just like breathing.

I breathe, and the universe nods like it knows what I mean.

DST

They say it's good for something, but you can't remember what. All you know is that you woke with an extra hour's sleep in your system, like a bribe, and that by afternoon it was dark outside and the evening stretched out too long around you. She writes from above the Arctic Circle and asks, is today the last time we see daylight?, her pleas alone enough to make you vow to never visit. There was a time when I did not know my whole self to die for several months each year, and I wonder now what that was like. To not slowly wither at the first slow dusk, to not feel fear with each cold gust of wind around the corner.

And yet, somehow,  it is only life. I've made it through too many winters to think I will not survive this one, too. Living a life does not mean evading the dark entirely. It means walking in it, and always remembering to walk yourself out.

Sera

November. A day so beautiful it assaulted the senses, all crinkly leaves drifting slowly to the ground, crisp wind and warm sunshine, the river beaming in its swell. The dead cat still lies on the rocks; I learn a lesson and let it lie. There's was a lightness in my step for the miles under my feet, there's a quiet void around me. I spent the afternoon scrubbing the apartment, I know the routine. Quiet doesn't last forever so you'd best breathe while you can. Everything is going to be okay drifts past your eyelids like a news ticker: you stow it away for future reference, would like to send it across the ether. We take the air conditioning units out of the window, just as the heat comes on in the riser. Second avenue is quieted. My room smells like dust and winter.

The first few days I have to be careful even in my sleep,
so I don't roll over and burn myself.