The ache remains at the base of your spine, the core of your self; physical pain indistinguishable from emotional, you know longer know where you end and the Universe begins. The lightest of your breaths yearn to be normal, but any air that reaches the bottom of your lung knows, it knows, what you really want is the cosmos.
How can we settle for the concrete when we know the sky is just beyond reach?
You twist your limbs inside out
but you never get where you thought
you were going.
There's a restlessness brewing, its itch is spreading inside your skin and cannot be blamed entirely on the lingering sunshine, the mild afternoons. It says perhaps you are not where you are meant to be, says perhaps there is a freedom somewhere out there that would put your mind at ease. It scours apartment listings but also dreams of a house in the woods, wonder who it is you could be if you stretched your limbs to where they didn't know they could reach.
You get nowhere in an instant.
Every journey worth taking
is a thousand miles
and more.
The mornings will not start, the sparks appear with the sprouts but there is no fuel in the tank, there is nothing to light. You find an old letter, 26 years but the handwriting is still yours, the wandering mind still familiar. How you saw the end of the world, how you asked where to spend its dying days, how the madness of power hungry men always seemed to eclipse the needs of the rest.
You still have to live, is the thing.
You still have to carry on until your dying day. The days will not die for you.
Might as well do something with the time you have
left.
It's a lifetime of hope and hope lost, is it not? It's a pile of days, an unending stream of waiting for it all to begin, when truly some of it is already over and you forgot to enjoy it. Spring leaps into my chest like a young child, unafraid and unconcerned with your scars, but my lungs are still full of soot, I am not ready for joy, not yet. There are steps to this dance I never quite figured out, and it makes my palms sweaty still to try. The rhythm seems perpetually someone else's.
I do not remember a time when I
was not broken.
That's a great knee, the doctor says, laughing, before he tells you they need to look closer for whatever criminals are lurking in its depths. You ask can I keep running like it was all the matters, and in that moment you realize it is. He speaks sunshine into the spring afternoon, smiles blossoms at your broken bones, everything seems possible and you walk down the Bowery with your jacket off.
You know it's happening, well before your spine has caught up. There's a lightness in your step, a breath in your lung that deceives you, reveals the returning life before you dare fully utter it out loud. You try not to look directly at it, try not to let yourself give into it, lest it get scared off at your enthusiasm. Joy is skittish like that, before it gains its footing, before it sinks its teeth into your shoulder and holds on through the shakes. You have been skittish too, but every now and then you stretch your fingers into the earth, let yourself exist and remain, and that's alright.
Another winter passes when you did not die. It is over now.
Now you are allowed to live.
A nation founders, moves forward on wobbly legs, muscles and bones cut off from the inside, it will not last, but how long until it crumbles? Will you make it out of the rubble in time?
Patti Smith sits in a venerable old hall in the Cooper Union, speaks of art and creating and silly anecdotes and bits of magic. You remember again why you came to this hodgepodge of a city, why you built your veins around its pulse, inserted yourself in its buildings and let yourself dream of belonging on its streets. A nation crumbles around you, now, what are you willing to do to save it?
I am only looking for answers, now, New York, no questions, no dreams, I have my bags full of those. I want only your solutions now. Show me how we can stay together; metaphorically, too.
A new month rises outside your window. It brings sunlight, little sprouts in the ground, signals of hope beamed to those who know where to look for them. You are on high alert for every last one, tracking sunset minutes, sensing vibration along the surface of your skin. You are tired, now, down to your last breath of air, your last leg, but you are alive, and the sun will let you sprout out of the husk you leave behind, its decaying self leaving nutrients and energy for the new self you grow out of it.
The cycle continues, unaffected, unabated. It is a comfort, when everything else falters.
A young girl on the subway platform asks if she is going in the right direction. It's her first time riding the subway. She's here to see all the things TikTok has told her to see. She is excited and terrified at once, you know the feeling well, adore her wide eyes. She asks if she can sit next to you on the train, tells you her itinerary, tells you she's never going to take the subway again but you tell her she will. You'll get the hang of it. Try to remember your first time on the subway. It must have been a six train.
You always did love the six train.
The years pass by you like caresses, you think it's all suffering and weights, but when you actually stop to look, have you not been blessed with the most magical days? New York came to you in a dream, eveyrthing came to you in a dream, you've been hiding in the darkness for a few months now but the sun is back now, little darling, life is back now, the magic is just getting ready to return, this is not the time to close the door.
This is the time to sprout.
