(but i miss you.
i miss you like there's a space inside my body
where the feel of your warm skin in the morning
used to reside
like
there was a whole person I used to be
and haven't seen since you left
like
our time together was a brief moment
of everything making sense
and hasn't since.
it was like i found my way out of the maze
only to now be lost
in the woods.)
I go out to move my car in the late morning, and the sun has already thawed the last piles of snow on the sidewalk. By the time the street sweeper has passed, I have taken my coat off, stand chatting with a neighbor on the corner of 6 and B in nothing more than a sweatshirt, beaming into the midday sun. I forget the cloud that's been sitting on my chest and run spontaneous errands from the sheer ease of it. The numbers are plummeting.
On the way home, a man catches up to me on Fourth street, says hello, says I've been seeing you walk by my shop for at least 5 years and, he pauses, looks sheepish, like he ran first and thought after, I just thought I should say hi. You recognize New York winking at you from a mile away, know we're both just lying in the ground, feeling the warmth at the end of our tendrils.
Just a little longer now, you hear it whisper, careful, but certain. Just a little longer and we can sprout again.
Can begin to recover
all that we lost in the war.
The path out of the darkness is frail, at first, you think you see light but you question why you still stumble. The head is full of cotton, every step tremulous. You try not to scare it. Suddenly you turn a corner. The air smells brighter, your blooded courses through your creaky limbs like they've been nothing but dust for millenia, you wake with air in your lungs. I scramble to finish the piles of work left abandoned in the darkness, catch up on days of unanswered letters, the shame all left behind by some magic you cannot understand. At night I do not sleep, a manic stream racing through my consciousness, I could write a book in this one small moment.
Today I walked out to the river
sun shining painfully hopeful across the East River
air fresh with potential
New York a peaceful giant stirring from its slumber.
All things are coming. You'll remember how to enjoy them in time.
I can't read anymore about the world
without living in it.
I can't think anymore about a life unlived
and still hope to make it another
40.
February doesn't roar in, it sneaks, bright early mornings but a heavy cloud in the margins, it's too tempting to succumb to the darkness, too familiar to lean into the tidal waves, deep breaths of salt water in your lungs, too easy to sink a hundred feet to the bottom.
I go back to bed, bury myself under the covers, pull down the blinds. Remind myself:
In 40 winters
not a one has killed me.
Thursday afternoons are for writing.
There is no rule for this, no law, no generally accepted absence from the day, but you take it anyway, force the fences up around your hours. Sit in silence, pour another cup of coffee, wait for the magic to seep in.
The thing about love is it sits there waiting, patiently. It is not fearful, it builds and evolves on itself and when you are ready, it is, too. When you show up with your full force and beating heart, it will match you step for step, the thing about winter is if you make it through,
there will be a spring.
I never didn't love you.
Let me prove to you
what I mean.
Heavy fog over Manhattan,
the ground thaws
conversation at
the old bar is
easy
and there's no telling what to make of that
You hold on to that which feels like
home
When I return to the tenement,
a delivery worker is trying to reach the triplex next door,
dormant this whole time and now suddenly a sign of
life
Too many signs
to piece them together yet.
Coast onto the Taconic State Parkway in the early afternoon, sunlight beaming across the snowy fields, watch the odometer cross one hundred thousand miles at the top of a hill, watch the darkest month of the year recede behind us, I gave the little station wagon a pat and a smile. All the things we have seen together, and the truth is I was a child when we first met. Near the outskirts of the city, a nondescript sedan rolls past, its vanity license plate saying FEBRUARY straight to my face and I burst out laughing like all the sunbeams of the Universe had coalesced in this one spot. The station wagon and I careened into Manhattan, deep gulping breaths at the sight of the Empire State building, gray and misty in the late afternoon, the FDR a fat, slow snake, but steady, alive. I slide into a nonexistant parking spot in a pile of snow on the block, you take whatever gifts the city offers and so often they are more than you could ever hope. The apartment is steaming, the plants thriving.
We made it to February, not only alive, but more.
Hopeful.
Everything that comes now,
is brighter.
