A Season

The year ends. A fabricated resolution, a chance to put away that which did not spark joy, a chance to feel new though nothing changed since the last sunset. You approach the precipice, gauging whether it's best to climb or leap, try to smell the wind for clues, try to read the dull ache in your knee for secrets. Who are you going to be when the sun rises tomorrow?

The knee says it can't tell time and has every intention of aching then, too. 

Suddenly it's clear as day, how scarcity sits in one's bones, like the body can grow but the vast emptiness inside does not shrink in proportion, it eats up the insides and reminds itself at every turn. You were raised hungry, you remain hungry. 

I speak to the dog in soft tones as I feed her bits of meatball, pears, egg, I say, When will you learn that you aren't living on the streets, when will you learn that you are safe now, that you will get all the food you need? and the words are scarcely out of my mouth before realize I am saying them to myself. 

When will you learn that you have made it out of the woods,
that you have rowed your boat to shore?

When will you believe that you are safe?

Thaw

The great snowstorm disspates, rains away with one mild day and it all turns to mist around Union Square. The bartender gave me free drinks, the Universe gives me free pennies, there's a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in. 

The dog spends her days sleeping, one ear perpetually cocked to not miss the sound of a fridge door opening. It's a simple life, and no less worthy of admiration. 

America waxes and wanes under your feet, reminds itself to you, what you were promised when you landed on these shores and the promises you made in return. The pot is boiling, now, you keep making promises. You've gotten so much for free, it is time to put some money where your mouth is. It's time to smile in copper coins. 

Check your pockets. 

You may just be good for it, now.  

Again, Again

Start and restart, there's no end to how many times you can wash yourself clean and begin anew, a blank slate for the telling. You were always a story ready to be unwound, always a curlicue of conversation. Sometimes we forget the voices that call to us, our hearing stumbling, our awareness elsewhere. The Universe has been speaking to me lately, nudging me, poking me in the side to make me giggle, it feels like a long-lost friend returning to the treehouse, like dawn at the end of a Polar Night. I keep finding pennies in the street, the other day I found forty dollars but I'm not sure if I can come to expect that again. 

December tumbles out of our hands, takes a disaster year with it, you'll still remember glints of light when you look back. You'll remember having hope at the beginning of the year as you look ahead. Are you ready to shed this skin? Are you ready to build something new out of the rubble? 

The answer is yes. The answer is all kinds of yes. 

De-cember

One holiday rolls out, another rolls in. The season was not meant for work and strife, but for candlelight and winding hours ignorant of clocks. I return to the bar, the bartender parked across the table telling me stories of her trip to England and rolling her eyes when other patrons come in. The two young girls next to me talk about a boy, and it's all I can do not to lean over and say he's just not that into you, but really the answer isn't that, it's that he's a child, still. He doesn't know how to step up, and she doesn't know, yet, to require it of him. 

You bring out a manuscript, long abandoned, edges scuffed. The voice sounds familiar, but like a distant cousin you know you liked growing up. I had missed you. You're unsure how to approach the wildling, trying to make yourself seem less threatening, even though you know you're not threatening at all. You only want the best for these pages, only want them to come to light in a sparkle. That's not a threat, surely, only a promise. Only a hope. 

She writes from the research institute to say you're next in line for the experimental treatment study. You tell her you're happy now and does that make you ineligible? She says yes. You say, I'm glad, and are a little overwhelmed to realize you mean it. 

She writes from 5th street to say the room is available, and would you like to come see it. You tell her you spend your Mondays down the block, writing. The bartender brings you cheese, this is your neighborhood even though it's been years since you last lived around the corner. Maybe it's time to return. 

Even strays are allowed to come home, 
now and then.  

Re:Pent

How creaky the floorboards of a house long abandoned. You step gingerly into it, but why? It is like stepping into a chamber of your own heart, this is yours, this is familiar and comforting and if I built it why could I not return? 

I never meant to be away so long. Never meant to let these muscles wane into oblivion, into a body I no longer recognize. You, I recognize. You, make sense. Everything else I could let go. 

Fall turns into poetry if you let it, if you remember to watch the leaves twirl to the ground and the wind beat its way into your spine. Brooklyn sits reliable outside your window, even as you remain unreliable within it. You think it's been a year of silence but it's been two, you're losing gallons of the blood you worked so hard to put in your veins, is this how you repay me? 

America, I'm puting my queer shoulder to the wheel.

The best thing about losing your self 
is the premise of finding it 
again. 

Som en Hemlös Själ

You remember it, it remains at the edge of your awareness, a memory of youthful optimism, there was a time when a song could change your heart, you refused the cynicism of people who knew better. How the fire gets washed out by reality. I think you need to shed it. Everything burns around you, why wouldn't you burn, too. 

It's not too late to start over, to go back to the beginning. Remember who you were, remeber how you knew better. 

You sit in a rocking chair on the back porch at sunset, listen to fireworks pretend everything is the best it's been. The dog is anxious, stares at the sky and wonders if you’ll protect her against the unseen enemy. There’s a metaphor in there and you don’t want to see it. 

Go to sleep, try again tomorrow. It’s not too late 

to start over. 

Gloria

New Hampshire sinks into your frazzled edges, fills voids you didn't know you had. You try impatiently to force a peace, a purpose, but that's not how it works, and you should know it by now. A third season on the road, summering across America, escaping into the outskirts. They offer you an apartment in Brooklyn, everything about it should have you saying yes, but when you drive out of New York along the FDR early one Saturday morning, all the shoulds wash away and you're left with the same inexplicable yearning for Manhattan that pulled you across oceans time and again and you were never sorry. 

I gave you my tired, my poor, I promised to want for nothing if only you'd love me, and I mean it still, how can I mean it still? There's something kind in a love that refuses to abate. 

I have lost so much, New York, but I have yet to lose you. 

So though the road leads north, 
I'll be back when the nights get longer again.