Somewhere Only We Know

The bartender slides into your plastic lined booth, explains that the table will remain crooked in perpetuity and asks for your number. She says Flatbush is great, just don't cross the avenue and don't walk home at night. You create mental maps and network in new boroughs. It's only 30 minutes to Union Square, she continues, and you think that's what people say when they have to justify where they live. You look at a one bedroom in Red Hook and wonder how well "exotic" stacks up against "complicated". 

It's funny.
People have been making that exact calculation along your skin
for decades. 

But you never stuck around long enough
To know the answer that ended up
in their hands.

On

A plastic yellow toy truck lies upended in the river, making slow moves down the rapids, lodged at every turn in an obstacle along the way. Four black wheels stick up into the air. My shoulders ache from working on the farm, but it's not the ache of cramped New York City white collar work, not the ache of muscles held too tightly along with breath. I feel taller than I have in years. 

You check in for a flight back to reality. Feel your spine prepare for other wavelengths. Wonder if you'll remember the things you've learned. If you'll learn the things you've remembered. 

As you pack, a note falls out of your pocket. You turn it over in your hands, wonder the question it's asking. 

It says, Say yes when you are afraid to. 

But you are not sure you are afraid of anything, anymore.

Frei Tag

You wake with a start, sleeping synapses trying to collect themselves in the split of a second, remember where they are and what they're meant to be doing. Something about the dream chasing them into the sunrise. A few misty clouds linger on the mountaintops, but mostly the morning is still, peaceful, unhurried, the air heavy with the scent of lilacs. Lines of your heritage appear underneath your skin, like veins suddenly lifting themselves to the surface, showing you what there was no escaping. 

The mallards play in the rapids outside your window. 

He sends you music across the continent, washes the morning in fearless joy, you remember there is promise on the horizon, and while it will not arrive on its own, all you have to do

is walk towards it.

You Can Dance If You Want To

Spring arrives to the mountain, all rushing floods and bursting blooms. Your days end with flushed cheeks and tired limbs, but just as much the sense that time has no power over you, that the Darkness lost its way chasing you and gave it a rest. You decide to continue running for a while, decide that the Great Escape is allowed to be more fun than trauma, decide that you feel better than you have in years. 

The grass is green outside your window, the cows unhurried in their moves across the pasture. You take deep breaths into the quiet evening, revel in a moment before the whirlwind picks back up.

See a hundred mornings line up before you.

Realize you look forward to greeting each and every one.

Great Escape

A group of the cows escape, make their way toward the greener grass of untouched fields, ford the river at its narrow end, well versed in reading the waters, in calmly making their way to more abundant pastures. You think there's a life lesson in the way they move. Someone in upstate New York could charge thousands for the workshop. 

You think maybe not everything is about how much money you can squeeze out of something. 

A plan begins to arrange itself in your lungs. It sees the eons spread out before you, sees big sky and verdant fields, sees a mind moving like the cows on their great escape - unhurried, with short bursts of elated sprints, curiously following the next patch of grass in the morning sun. 

The cows dip their heads in the river, let the cold mountain water rush over their brows. Know only this moment, and maybe the next. 

Know everything they need,
to greet it.

Story

You stare at the starry sky for ages, breath held, silent. At last spring has arrived and the air is calm, mild, although it is too soon for the cicadas to puncture the silence with their static. The stars stretch across their dark canvas all the way down to invisible mountain ranges around you; you wait, impatiently, for one of them to break free from their pocket and burst in a fiery arc and extinguish. But none do. 

Instead, after so much silent waiting, a new thought appears in the back of your mind: a story, beginning in the pricks of light across the firmament, connecting itself like a game between the stars, weaving bits of mystery onto a blank canvas. You forget about the absence of the shooting stars, forgive the sky its unanswered prayers. 

Realize sometimes you get things you didn't know to ask for.

Wanderlust

He arrives in smiles, 28 years of friendship and you never tire of the easy way he bursts into your line of vision. Not five minutes later, you are deep in discussions of everything all at once, your literary dreams building trails into the air, his voice a guide through the jungle. The fire on the back deck brings more comfort than warmth but you wrap yourselves in more layers and determine to remain out in the open. 

They say with you application, send a 10-song playlist that describes you and you wonder if it's more therapy than arts residency, but you accept the terms and play the game. Remove Paul Simon, add in Regina Spektor, wonder if lyrics about failing mental health or a penchant for whisky automatically disqualifies you. Your red flags glitter in the afternoon sunlight. The road lies open at your feet. 

He asks, What's your plan, then?, and for the first time in years, you're delighted to not entirely know.