Obscure

The morning is easy, a comfortable transition of puttering and planning, too much rain for a walk but just the right amount for wistful wanderings, you find the work made light and try to remember why it was such a struggle before. It turns out a house in ruins was not your inevitable state, turns out a mind in shambles was not a sign of your own failings, you feel like the devil tricked you again even when you were supposed to know better. 

But the point is, none of the shambles matter once you are out of the woods. None of the smoking ruins, the scorched earth, the years lost to darkness. The point is, the joke's on the devil, because while he remains singed in the canopy, you've found the path again, and you
are walking away.

May day

A new month awakens, leaves april showers behind, makes mole hills out of your mountains, was it always this easy to breathe? After all your attempts, it turns out there wasn't a trick to it at all but letting the smoke clear from the forest fire. Every step you take around the apartment is a careful consideration of what's at your fingertips: do I keep this coaster, when I move? Your landlord scoffs at your negotiations, Alphabet City quakes underneath the soles of your feet and you are unafraid. After all, does not the road lie beneath it? You consider how much can fit in a duffel, only to find that a neighbor is gifting one. The road winks at you, and your knees grow weak. A new story writes itself at your fingertips. 

It's wondrous how emerging out of illness
feels so much like being born anew. 

Rasa Vinter

A holiday arrives, tears at your heritage, sings of flowering forest floors, of babbling brooks and how the medieval heroines of your childhood just had to shout in spring. Somehow you made it to May, but it's more than that. Somehow you made it out of the woods, you start to believe it now. Start to look at the piles of paper around you and think, it's time to do something about this. There was a time you believed in life, and maybe, just maybe, you do again. 

It's hard to know where to start when you've burned everything to the ground. 

Sometimes just standing still and watching the smoke clear
is good enough.

Post It

A writing day comes and goes in oblivion. By nightfall, you sit with shreds of words strewn about you and wonder how you can squander your gifts like this. In the depths of your chest, in that little hollow that always fears until filled, a new character stretches her limbs and looks around. The trees begin to grow around her, the promise of adventure aroud the corner, and as the story twists and turns in the tiniest curls along your rib cage, you begin to sense again the awe of discovery. It's buried deep, so deep in your lungs it's like you'd forgotten how to breathe but there it is, just a tiny morsel of a story, but there, indubitably there. 

You close the books on the squandered day. Think maybe morsels can build mountains, too.

Serotonine

Is this what it is like to be happy?

You find yourself asking the question into the peaceful space after a run, into the peaceful space of budding leaves on the trees outside my window, into the peaceful space of a soul at ease. Do people just live like this? It seems impossible. 

And yet, at the very bottom of the well from which you scoop there is the sense that you, too, have lived like this. At the very ends of your muscle memory sits the tiniest tingle that you know these steps, that you remember what it is to get out of bed, do the things that you intended, walk back straight, eyes clear, believe in tomorrow, what it is to look at the next 40 years and not think how am I supposed to endure all of that?

You take cautious steps into the street, feel Avenue B stretch its limbs into the late spring, smell lilacs from the 6B garden on the breeze, you count the light days like you used to count twenty-dollar bills in your sock drawer, let your lungs expand in security, a new book creates itself under your broken wings, the writing bar is mellow on Mondays, there was a time when you thought how am I supposed to endure all of that?

but that time is not today. 

Today I just live like this
and save it in the sock drawer.

The Space In-Between

Well how much do you want to pay? the landlord writes back, desperately weary on his high horse. He holds all the cards except the one of convenience, and stumbles when he realizes you are impervious to its supposed safety. He doesn't know you were raised in a moving vehicle, doesn't know you've never truly leaned on the comfort of a house key, they beat it out of you years ago and now you sleep as well on the mattresses of strangers. At some point you still need to make decisions. At some point you still need to craft answers out of the whims of your subconscious. 

But for the first time in years,
you are ready for answers
that feel like fun.

Tip. Toe.

The monster curls its tail and retreats, you try to remember if this is what it feels like to return to the living, if this is how it used to be when you breathed all on your own, but it's too long ago now, you don't dare believe the lightness in your lungs, the ease of your smile. Are we out of the woods? It seems too good to be true. You go to the Monday bar on a Tuesday, stare at the patrons because they are not the same, like taking a later train on your morning commute and finding your regulars replaced by aliens. 

You look at apartment listings and wonder who you'd be in Flatbush. Somehow nothing scares you now like it used to. Somehow you dug your nails into New York, and it will never be rid of you completely, its grime coursing through your veins now, you are impervious to its abandonment. The bartender says if he gets re-elected I may go back home, but you both know the words are empty, this is home, it's too hard to explain to people who have never breathed it. You both stuck it out at this little bar on 5th street, you both waded through eons of New York to get to this point and remain, it's only life if you refuse to see its magic. 

When you are ready for it, the fear is rendered mute.
The Universe rewards those who keep going.