or Another

The bourbon moves in for the season, early mornings with their cool breeze now despite warm late-night runs along the river, it's a confusing time of year. She writes from the upstate bliss, says it's the last day before the pool closes for the season, is a hundred Sunday scaries stacked on top of each other but if you haven't had a summer you cannot be sad to see it part. The only people putting away their whites tomorrow are the rich folks of the northeast and you haven't owned a loafer in your whole life. 

I chose poverty, I chose art and I chose New York and at the end of the 

season

I am not sorry.

Silent

Days pass in quiet mumbles, in averted eyes and failed restarts. An anniversary of 15 years in this city passes in sweet recollection; New York holds my hand as everything tumbles around us. Years ago I made deals with the devil, and the irony is not lost on me how he comes to cash in. 

I dreamed we kissed, surprised kisses out of years of wreckage. Don't worry, I know dreams get convoluted, don't worry; I know we have settled on never being so happy. I sleep with my window open and wake before dawn, cold air dancing over my naked limbs like taunts about the coming of fall. This year will be different, I etch into my skin with a dull pen, perpetually misunderstood teenager trying to will my voice into existence, still unsure if the years ever are different when I try to make them. Pandemics can still sweep in over the best intentions. It's when you try to please everybody that you lose track of what to believe. It's been 20 years since the towers fell and you don't feel a day over ancient.

It's okay. We'll wake soon, can pretend we won the war and all we have to do
is climb out of the rubble
and then we'll see the light.

39

Impossible numbers add up on my abacus. I write myself words but do not want to share them, they are mine now, some of them break me at the delicate seams, but some will make their way inside and strengthen the bones, and I cannot give them away while my core is so weak. The mouse remains, I watch him run into the stove when he sees me. The exterminator says he'll be there at dawn. 

Another year has passed, and didn't we all think we'd be somewhere better by now? Still, another year has passed, and this is where we are. Dig where you stand. One day this pain will be useful to you. I know this isn't what you had in mind, but listen to me now. 

One day you will look back on this time and see it as the time that built your muscles, that sharpened your vision. One day you will look back on this time with softness in your heart, and the storm clouds that seem so encroaching now, that sit like a weight on your chest, they will somehow come to look like wisps of cotton candy. 

You made it this far. Why not just keep going?

This year, it's as good a pep talk as any.

Fredagsbarn

The exterminator says he'll come back. Monday, 7 am. Clear out everything. I spend my mornings scouring the tiles, throwing gargantuan insects out the window, what is a life in New York if not an unending eyeroll at the great joke at our expense. I sit in the car for an hour and a half sweating, block after block of drivers in cars, running out the clock, staring into eternity. Time is only an illusion until it shows up on your skin. He buzzes in your periphery but your heart is hardened, there's a to-do list inside your eyelids and you haven't time for dead end streets pulling on your strings. 

Tomorrow a new leaf turns. 

What that means is entirely up to you.

Oceans Rising

A hurricane appears on the horizon, crying wolf at the coastline. New Yorkers remain unruffled, checking their liquor stores and leaning back. You think we haven't seen worse? The storm loses interest and veers off toward New England, tossing a few thousand buckets of water in our general direction. 

For an entire day, I do not leave the bed. I stretch long limbs to collect new books, rogue pens, switch sides to find the what little light seeps from between the storm clouds, step gingerly onto the leaning floor to refill the coffee cup. It should be a dream but it is steeped in the last words of broken hearts, convoluted by the shreds of old wounds stuck in the spokes. The day runs away, the weekend, the season, drowned in a monsoon, a pandemic, a soul too lost to ever have had hope in finding its way. Monday morning arrives. 

That's all there is to say about it.

Echo Park

Wake early, pummel through the day, everything is a list of to-dos, everything is hamster wheels you spent a life time avoiding. Late at night, warm Friday night in New York City, I run along the river and remember poetry in my veins, remember purpose in the dark silence. There's a spontaneous dance party in the amphitheater. New Yorkers will not relent. He says he's coming through the city and you wonder what it means to steal moments. 

This decade doesn't give you any moments,
you see,

so you do what you can 

with the sticky fingers

you made yourself in the fire.

Alternate Side Parking

It's funny how you fight so hard to escape some claws, and then once they are behind you, it's impossible to remember their grasp. You turn the mechanics over in your hand, watch the metal gears crumble at your touch, how did this street mean so much once? Your eyes? I move the car and the exterminator comes to seal the cracks in your armor, we take this whole life one day at a time. This morning I read a passage that tasted like magic and only later realized I had written it. Sometimes this whole life surprises us. 

Mostly it comes in fits and spurts. 

(This is the first day of my life, he says, but you think every day is the first day, really, and shouldn't you make it memorable? I read another passage, look out the window, watch a full moon rise over the Lower East Side. Think that's exactly it and call it a day. Miracles so rarely announce themselves in fireworks. You mostly know they've been there by the scent that lingers when they've left.)