What More Can I Do

Quiet apartment, you sit in the window watching commuter trains leave the city and counting down minutes until Christmas can land in your bones. The day was warm, sunny, like a beautiful spring day but you saw it only as a gift. I stood along the river and stared straight into the light like it would save me, and it’s not unlikely that it did. There was a great hole in the earth yesterday, did you feel it? Sometimes I think the universe dialed us in to the same connection without realizing; I don’t know yet what it means. The commuter trains returning to the city are empty.

Sometimes I think my heart would beat out of my chest if I let it go.

Squall

The snow, when it comes, is a monster, appearing out of nowhere and burying you in a second. You see videos later and it looks like an avalanche burying the city. The snow leaves arctic air in its wake, every step carefully calculated against risk and reward. We make our way into an old townhouse off 5th avenue, the ballroom coming alive with story and you marvel at New York City magic, how it appears and reappears at every turn. I whisper my gratitude into the night, and again, and again. Sometimes love overwhelms us when we forget to look for it, it rolls like waves through our insides and grows us whether we want to or not. Love is not proud. It always perseveres.

The day is mild again, the sun setting in fire at the other end of the bay, every step I take is in gratitude now, do you know that? At some point all the shattered pieces within me healed, at some point I could look in the mirror and recognize my face again, love is patient, love is kind. The darkest day of the year is behind us now.

Every step beyond this is a gift
is a
triumph.

Advent

December is a blur, more work, more deadlines, more scheduled cheer and you try to drink it in as best you can: mania is a temporary gift, and the January hangover already looms in the distance. I bought a light therapy lamp, sit staring into it in the mornings like an addict, longing for it when it goes dark. I'm sorry I never write, I'm just so busy keeping my hands to myself, there's too much light in this body this season and I need to share it somehow, yesterday I ran along the river and it was like my body remembered again who I am, what I'm meant to be doing. It's been such a long time of having forgotten, it's no wonder if we are strangers to each other.

But do not worry. I carry light with me now, I make my own. Stick with me, kid, I carry stars in my hands and you look like you could use a few in yours: the magic of Life is how it all
evens
out.

Upstate

Winding Friday night slog out of the city, it takes two hours just to get off the island and by then it is dark, the parkway shrouded in mist, it’s a horror story. We navigate the last few blocks by memory, the little town asked again to carry our dreams and our needs for escape: everyone is friendly, everything is quiet. We roast marshmallows in the fireplace and wear matching pajamas until noon, ride horse drawn carriages with jingling bells and enter the raffle with unknown rewards. So long since I last walked these streets; I was broken, then, a bowlful of empty and now how my steps are light, my limbs only here and nowhere else.

Do you hear me?

I carried the piles of my own smoking ruins, these devastated bones, I brought them through unending winters and raging storms and now I am here: I break and break but am not broken. Do you hear me?

The heart heals 
And heals
anew. 

Wintry Mix

You wake early, the streets black and slick with last night's rain. Everything is quiet, like no one really is sure what time it is. The radiator has lost its mind and pumps out steam enough to heat a small village, you swelter and open a window. Rise and Shine. You run to the trains hoping the weather hasn't derailed the time tables but knowing better; by the time you unearth in Brooklyn the mist has turned to hail, and when the sun finally rises, it is hidden behind a blanket of big, heavy snowflakes.

I wake every morning from strange dreams, wandering through dilapidated houses and wondering at the whims of the Universe. I think I was lost for a while, you know, and I'm sorry if I dragged you with me in the muck, but I am ready to step out now. Rain turns to hail turns to snow on our eyelashes, what can we do but roll with the punches? There is work to be done, books to be written, we have destinies to fulfill. Meet me on the shore whenever you're ready.

We can look at the map together.

Gumdrops

A day slips through your fingers: you were ever the master procrastinator, perfectly poised to tiptoe around the fire in perpetuity. Hours while away into pretended necessities. A year lies behind you, a thousand pages lie behind you, how many times will you have to correct your trajectory? I went for a long run along the river, before the rain, the air so mild; I've been forgetting to trace my steps lately and yet every return to the starting line is a remedy. My body is unrecognizable lately, my mind covered in piles of confusion and my heart crumpled. But a tiny flame sits, still, in the deepest corner of my chest, carrying on unabated despite the wreckage around. It is guarded by a young girl at the edge of a cursor. She runs alongside me, says: every return to the starting line is a remedy. Correcting your trajectory is better than walking the line.

It is dancing it.

Create

(the bar is loud despite the rain, you only have a minute and you squeeze as much as you can out of it, you eke out a trickle of words like drops of blood, crawling toward the finish line and it is constantly moved further away. We are at the end of this year now, do me a favor and crumple in up, throw it in the fire at first chance. Forget who you were and what you did to yourself, you won't want to remember it in your old age. Take with you only rage, only the stubborn grit that does not let you run away anymore, it is too hard earned to leave behind, it cost you too much to let go. The bar is loud despite the rain, you are here despite the darkness, a new year arrives on the horizon and god damn if I won't step into it and leave
these ashes
behind.)