Decades

I used to wonder how you could do it. How, when spring was finally returning and the sun shining. How, when the worst was behind us and your laugh was so infectious. All the best was yet to come and it was such a beautiful morning. Still you opened that window and closed your every door. It's been ten years today, and I didn't realize until I walked up seventh avenue crying, muffling the sounds because my father was at the other end of the line. Tell us something fun, he said.

It was a beautiful day today, too, if freezing. And I cried, not because I didn't understand. But because I did. 

It was an awfully high building. 

I am still afraid of heights. 

Sometimes we fall when we don't mean to. 

Avocado Pears

Home returns in pieces. In liquid East Village brunches and short glimpses of elusive skyscrapers from the High Line park. In scents of warm mulch and dirty asphalt, sounds of sirens. I slept for hours one day and didn't leave the house except to walk the poor dog in pouring rain. Comfort in closed doors, trying to repair the broken seams and replace the filling that fell out when I wasn't paying attention. I take out notebooks and Bic pens, trying to make sense of what my gut has been telling me. Home returns in words.

It occurs to me that not every one makes their life this crooked. That not every one twists and turns these Questions into unrecognizable daggers that can never be carved out of their hearts.

To be honest, I don't know why I do it.

To be honest, I don't know now how to stop.

Sides

(When you got nothing,
you got nothing to lose)

Buzz

There is sand inside my phone case. I hesitate to take it off for fear of scratching it, but perhaps I'm more afraid of losing the last grains of warm vacation airs and the levity of Elsewhere. 

We ride the rush hour train to JFK; an earlier incident, of course, and the train is both late and chock full, but we squeeze in and the baby never wakes. I leave them at the AirTrain entrance, this sterile hallway of white and windows, and my tears look ugly and out of place in its air. Three months will pass quickly, she says, but we know that's not it. These are just the things we tell ourselves to ease the weight in our chests. 

The trains are delayed going back as well. The evening grows dark, and freezing, as the text comes in from across the seas. We're engaged. Perhaps we can set the wedding so you'll be home for it, too. 

Eventually, the Friday night A train into Manhattan, into my dirty crooked streets, my tiny room in the Village, back to the one place where none of those sorrows fit. I smile before we even reach the East River. 

Remember it is worth the every lost grain of sand. 

Pay Attention now

A whooshing sound in my ears, shaky legs like trying to stand on the ocean. The alarm clock doesn't sound like mine, I awake not sure who I am, or where, but this life is unchangeably mine. Four days have passed in a vacuum of early mornings and late nights, of a quickly disappearing tan line and a devastatingly cold New York, the return has been all sorts of unkind. My vision goes blurry before I reach Delancey. I count down the hours. 

Hoping to land, eventually, on the ground. 

Gate 4

The airport is coolly air conditioned, the usual collections of entirely diverse travelers, tired security personnel, and overly made up duty free salespeople. Outside the tall windows, a bright afternoon sun beams on the tarmac and the deep blue sea beyond. I shift uncomfortably in my seat, my gut unwilling to accept departure. Images of dark New York streets and the early alarm clock tomorrow nag at my edges. I was not ready to go. You are never ready to go. The baby waved a frantic giggling goodbye at the curb and it broke my heart to leave him, to not wake up every morning to his smile but know that he is growing up without his aunt around him. He deserves to take my presence for granted, and the fault is all mine that he can't. It begins to mean more that I leave people. They are not filler materials for my literary backdrops. Perhaps they never were; I've just been too ignorant to see it. 

The conditioned air cools the droplets of sweat on my brow. Zips me back up into composure. The flight to America appears on the screen, announces its On Time departure. Tomorrow is F train commute and business as usual. This softness of my skin will harden again. 

Caribbean Blue

Used clothes lie in a pile of sand and sweat on top of the dresser. A long-sleeved cardigan laughably out of place, untouched. I overpacked, I always overpack, I could have survived this trip on a sundress and a pair of flip flops, I see that now. I do not prepare the water jugs in the fridge tonight, do not arrange the beach bags or scour maps for undiscovered treasures. Tomorrow, instead, is travel again, is that sad cardigan and lace-up sneakers and arriving LaGuardia at several degrees below freezing and my brown skin will have rubbed off in transit. Impossible to imagine the disappearance of such a week. A final dive in the ocean, watching my changed skin revel in itself, my fingers sweeping through the turquoise water like some painting unreal, of course I was reluctant to go. I have forgotten an entire life, abandoned it wholly for this fantasy. And now it is over.

My eyes close on their own accord, my limbs tired from the sweetness. I lie in the sweltering room, tiny beads of sweat in my temple. Breathe deeply the heavy air of Elsewhere.