Stall

The to-do lists and deadlines pile up around me, mountains of demands screaming in my eardrum while I cower in a corner, exhausted by the nor'easters dragging around my little shoebox on the corner. The super doesn't show, as he always never shows, we all battle demons but differently, there are flowers in my vases but tears in my limbs, I haven't written a good word all year, its absence rips at my sinew, devours my insides, I falter. 

There are things more important than six figure incomes and looking good on paper. 

You forget, so easily you forget. But when the word reminds itself to you..

How the heart swells beyond anything you ever dared to dream.

Espera

Sunlight beams in through the south facing windows in the little shoebox, impending winter reverses course. I run along the river, believing in another day. He writes, and I wonder what slumbers in me still, how long it will remain in hibernation. Bury myself in work, in the way a to-do list can twist and turn around itself. 

Sometimes we are more questions than answers. Keep your nose to the grindstone. 

Even babysteps one day lead somewhere.

Milling

The street downstairs is blocked off, they intend to tear the whole thing up by its roots, they intend to turn it over and maybe start afresh but all it means is you will not sleep till dawn

but would you have anyway? 

The weather turned on a dime, you pull out mountains of warmer clothing to make it just two stops into Brooklyn, just two steps into your imagination playing tricks on you, the Reverend is on the stage playing music and you can’t help yourself, there’s something about an old spiritual that makes you smile into a silence, he walks you reluctantly to the train and in the space between you forget to put on your mask, forget there was a pandemic. The heat comes on in the little apartment on 6th street. A moon is nearly full outside the window  

You sleep, but only on paper. 

Passing

The sun shines down on anxious New Yorkers, promises another few moments of bliss, promises a snooze button on the darkness or whatever dangers lurk. We sit on a pedestrian St. Marks drinking sangria and making jokes, we sit on an unsecured east village rooftop pondering the nation we chose, we sit in a tenement shoebox wondering what art is left to make, I think there is magic to be found after so much drought, that could not have been seen in the riches. He speaks in riddles but all you see are the dimples in his cheeks, all you will remember are a few breathless softnesses in a rickety stairwell, the last two years have taken so much from us that we must welcome the gifts when they are given with open arms, with the absence of defense. They say the weather is about to turn, they say gather ye rosebuds while ye may, but you have lived through a hell, you have walked through many a fire, if anything were to come out of all this pain, 

perhaps it will be the knowledge
that you did, too.

Open

We get seats near the top of the tiny theater, latecomers squeezing in along the rafters, no one knows how to do this anymore so we are all foals finding our footing together, there is a sweet kindness in the steps. They read poetry and verse, sing songs, tell stories, we clap and cheer and remember what life is lived in the margins, you hear new words tell themselves to you and you think maybe the last two years were rough because the magic didn’t have room to whisper itself to you in the stillness. For a short while you feel the illness that sits in you abate, feel the lightness on your chest that comes with breath, remember what it is to be human. Your heels click clack across the cobble stone all the way home, you love New York like your life depended on it and it does, oh it does, today a bright pink couch was delivered to the little shoebox on 6th street and I know what they will say about me when I’m gone but lord, I am not afraid to say it while I’m still here, it comes out at odd angles but all it speaks 

is truth. 

Trellis

October carries on in gray clouds across the weeks, dragging us slowly into the season like no one really has the energy anymore to worry about if the sun is shining. It's been years since the sun shone, for some, what's the point in waiting around. A million deadlines wake me from my sleep and I think we knew we'd look bad with a melancholy fondness to some of those despairing days, and here we are. Anxiety runs rampant through my veins and I can't catch it, can't draw it out of the speeding blood. She writes to say he's become a millionaire selling NFTs and you cannot begin to process the twists and turns of this world. Is this why people pick up and move into the woods. 

A lone morning glory blossoms on the fire escape, while the jungle of vines that went before it starts to wither. Is it worth any less for its late bloom? Or, perhaps, any more?

The day stretches out ahead of me in a panic. 

I don't have the answers, yet.

Lucy

The gears are rusty, winding themselves around curling irons and lipstick shades, ordering whisky drinks at the other end of the bar and wondering what the point is on a rainy October evening. But you run to the F train like something in your spine knows what it’s doing, you navigate late night brooklyn like it used to live in your blood stream, theres something about muscles reviving with use, fall waits in the margins, the avenues lie quiet on Sunday nights but the bodega florist on the corner will still wrap you a bouquet and Key Foods doesn’t close, this is New York after all, not some little backwater suburb from whence you came. We wax poetic about the city but it’s clear he doesn’t have the language for it you do. 

It’s late and you are anything but tired. 

That’s all New York’s doing. Don’t go getting it confused. The city never goes to sleep 

in you.