Whirl

The days rush from under you, spinning in strange aches and confusing maelstroms, time becomes a figment of your abundant imagination - maybe you never had any to begin with. His face on the screen lingers, softening your panic, maybe all will not be disasters in the end. 

New York is a dream in November, even after Daylight Savings robs you of your will to go on come four pm, at least the mornings are a dream, at least the little shoebox on 6th street is a mountain of windows, you cannot be angry when you dreamed a place such as this into existence. New York continues to shine its light on you. 

You go back to the drawing board. You know there was a purpose there, waiting. You just needed breath enough to find it.

Dove

Don't trust a thin pastrymaker drifts past me in the late afternoon silence. Meditations can be so strange when you leave yourself open to the currents of the universe. The woman in the meditation room asks me to imagine dreams of a life and all I see are ink blots, all I see is a life in words, hours and hours of words, again the answer paints itself across my headlights, it's too frustrating to wear yourself thin grating against reality on a daily basis.

I spend a day with the dregs of a week, the last stinging tentacles of disease, we gather around an imaginary dinner table and speak of kisses, the tears are surprising but in the end we are hopeful about swoon. He asks What was the last kiss that felt like home? and I cannot answer it, the words will not come out, I'm keeping this one to myself, you see, I fought too hard for Home, too long, when it shows up in kisses
I keep them to myself. 

We spend an entire life
just trying to get where we're
going.

 

Cygnets

We meet on the corner of Port Authority and Disneyland, this strange maze of bright lights and destitution. We squeeze into the little five bar on 9th avenue and squeeze in next to College Bros and Suit Bros and one of those quirky older ladies who believes you are interested in hearing what she has to say. The musical is awful, Off Broadway at its most tragic, so close in geography yet so painfully far in.. well, everything else. We rush back to the village before the aftermath has even worn off, order bowlfuls of expensive wine, wash ourselves clean. In the morning, my head pounds cruelly, but I rise to the word processor and wind into the Otherworld, familiar yet achingly far away. I am lost in its magical pathways, ever trying to find my way.

But at least I am there. 

The heat rises in the little shoebox on 6th street. The bodega reopens its flower shop, celebrates with flags and music in the afternoon sun. New York is beautiful beyond measure in November and it's a lesson as worthwhile as any. 

Any truth you've ever known can be rewritten. 

There are marvels left in life yet to find.

Hold

My head is cotton, a body of limbs under water and the whole apartment swims in a sweat. Somehow, the hours are longer in fever, I write and write, unencumbered by the normal restraints of society. The silence reminds me, somehow, of all the things that ever mattered, truths crystallized by the force of illness, by the non-negotiable holding of a breath, I meditated late in the night when the pills kept me from sleeping and all I could see was tenderness, how has this pandemic wiped your touch from my memory. 

How has this pandemic wiped my memory

?

I pick up a pen again. He asks about summer but winter is here, they speak of winter but I spent the day bathed in sunshine, I dreamed this little shoebox with all the windows into existence there is no

end to what magic

I can bring into
existence.

Degree

The fever rises in me, washing across my skeleton like splashes in a hot tub, I can't tell what's the radiator steaming along the side of my leg, I forget how to breathe. The scarier tests come back negative, we've just forgotten what a regular old infection is like, was it always this immobilizing? I lie in bed and watch the stories unfurl, how does it always work like this, how does it still manage to surprise you? 

I fall asleep in the bath, later, I drift into the voids of the in betweens, everything becomes poetry in the flow. 

If the word returns to me with this illness,
I don't want it ever to pass.

Magic

The hours look differently under the word processor. There's an ease to the day, a gentle hum to the street, and somehow each sentence begets the next, painting entire worlds underneath your fingertips. 

How is it possible to have all the Answers,
to know love in your heart, 

and keep choosing the wrong paths instead?

Achieve

Two thousand, five hundred seventy-seven posts. How many manuscripts, how many stories. Nothing is easy to count in the piles at your feet, your floor is poetry by now. You start anew. Blank slate, white page, new month, new you, the human spirit was built on blissful ignorance. 

There's a magic in the untold story, in that moment just before it reaches you. You see its outstretched hand, sense its scent on the wind, feel something stirring inside you, something like hope. You remember the delirium of so many times before, the conviction that you'd gladly give up every other love, gladly set your house on fire, if only the story would remain with you and let itself be told. 

It is an illness, perhaps. 

But we're all going to die one way or another. 

I agreed long ago to let this be what kills me.