Start

You make promises to yourself, efforts to steer yourself back into a spine that feels like home. Circle the manuscript like a stray dog fearful of love. There may be something to eat in there. Promises are equal parts pressure and hope. Day one is just to open the door, glance at the jumble, reintroduce yourself. Friend or foe? It's been a long absence, you'll settle for a smile and a wave. Just a little snack. 

Time makes your joints rusty, but it's nothing you can't warm up. One toe at a time, one turn of phrase. Just open the blank page, just try a syllable on for size. 

Just start. 

There isn't much more to it than that.  

2026

A year begins.

14th street is quiet in the morning after, scattered confetti and a group of young boys on their way home, saying good morning and giggling, you allow it. The dog is oblivious to turned pages, her focus remains where it's been for ten years, on finding chicken bones along the edges of the sidewalk. There is a reassuring beauty in routine. 

You try to imagine your own proverbial chicken bones, the thing that'll keep you always on the hunt, always with your nose to the scents, the thing you'll never tire of trying to reach. You suspect it's a story, but it might just as well be the way your heart feels in your chest when the afternoon sunlight hits downtown Manhattan as you scale the Brooklyn Bridge. One is not worth more than the other. 

A year begins. 

You aim to begin
with it.  

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.