(Pause)

When the stillness comes, you find an unease in the weight of your body. You try to fill the silence with all manner of nervous tics, with nonsense and noise, but the weight is patient, has nowhere else to be, the weight is ready to wait you out. Do you remember that early morning in the quiet hotel room, the trembling reassurance in the warm space beween us? That was the last time I was happy,  I think. But I'm still here, and I have to make that count for something. 

We have survived eleven months now of standing on a ground that constantly gives way beneath our feet, surely that counts for something. 

You hav another quiet day waiting in the wings. Get your pen and paper ready, get your to do lists and check marks and stories lines up. You cannot outrun the weight in your body. 

The only way out is through.

Rest

When everything has been sent away for scrutiny, when everything meant to be created has been, and you at last have that moment to sink into the quiet softness of the afters.. 

it will never be as sweet in reality as in dreams. 

Everything we hope for looks better in our minds. I try to remember that, when the pain of your afters tears at my chest again. You were never as sweet in reality as I wanted you to be. 

I am a long projection of unfulfilled potential myself. 

There’s a secret to uncover here, if you can bear it. 

Edit

You say you’re coming home next month, that paradise is over and reality returns with the spring flowers. I want you here, did I mention I want you here, but you escaped the storms and the darkness and I don’t know if I can forgive that absence. Must everyone suffer to win my praise? Could it not be enough penance if you let me run my fingers through your wavy disheveled hair?

The deadlines arrive at last in a fire. I emerge charred from the rubble, more questions than answers, more uncertainty than poise. It’s only February, was this how the year was meant to go? They’re only growing pains, she says, but how are we not to cry with the breaking of our bones? There isn’t enough bourbon on the isle of manhattan to quell this despair, it doesn’t mean we won’t keep trying. 

It’s only February. It’s only winter storms in a pandemic, it’s only a world at the edge of crumbling don’t worry. You come back when you’re good and ready, see if I won’t be here still. 

See if I won’t be spring flowers and a house on fire, all at once before you’ve even landed. 

Window

My father collapses and cannot understand why. All around me, everyone collapses, it's a cruel season and hell freezes over in the south, everyone suffers. Are we just frogs in boiling water, not understanding when we are in the apocalypse entirely? They cancel street sweeping again for the snow, you buy yourself a morning's freedom, but then you sorely need it because another deadline looms. The deadlines are always looming. 

You wonder what it would be like to have a job and a house in Ohio. 

(You try to remind yourself that you always wonder what it's like to have a job and a house in Ohio when the world comes crashing down and that really what you want is a closet sized studio on avenue B with dirty windows in three directions but it's hard to get your priorities straight when all of the world is out of focus.)

It's only February, you tell him. Do not draw any conclusions about the state of your mind just now. He hesitates to believe you, but you know what a winter under the weight of the world feels like, this one is only that but worse. The deadline mutters at you from a corner again. 

You remind yourself that you've been through fire before. You've been through the long, unending darkness and seen it end before you did. It is dark now. 

But it will not be dark forever. 

Just be here when it's over
and we can begin to build where we stand.

Spent

We're hanging on by a thin thread as it is, she says into the cloudy space of our apartment, the tired, last dregs of a space that has nothing left to give. We are running on empty. The to do list runs long, the inbox bursting at the seams and a hundred different countdown clocks ticking, why do they all feel like bombs about to go off? From every direction come cries of despair, everyone is at the end of their rope, looking for any morsel of hope, or light, or joy, and no one has any to give. 

What a beyond crazy year. What strange, dark magic roils around this year, what absolute tar we have had to drag ourselves through. Is it any wonder we are barely still here?

(but we are here. in some shape, however beat up and beat down, we are here. just hold on a little longer, just put one foot in front of the other. spring will come, as it always does. be here then, and we'll take it from there.)

to Cheek

 Life comes to you in little miracles. 

Sometimes so small you don’t even see them. 

But look behind you, now and again. Look at how far you’ve come. 

You’ll see miracles where before you could have sworn you saw only sorrow. 

You’ll hear music where before the silence drowned it out. 

Worth Writing About

Your appointment is confirmed. Be here in an hour. You throw on clothes strewn around the floor, drag the car out of its icy cradle, make your way to unknown corners of the Bronx. It's quick, so quick you do not have time to catch up with the moment as it passes, aren't people taking selfies? 

Are we supposed to be taking selfies?

The nurse asks if I have any questions. But I am all out of questions now, it's been a year of torment, I drove out to the Bronx at the turn of a dime, what questions could possibly bother me now?

He calls, later, to explain the winding turns of a life, and you wonder when the snow will thaw at last. The car is parked in a new snowdrift, my arm hurts a little but not more than the alternative, as we said. All the alternatives have been hurting so much, for so long. 

The hurt isn't over. 

But oh there's a chance it's working its way out.