Some Butterflies Somewhere

At mile five, the sun sets over New Jersey. The city swims in an orange glow, perfect summer evening the park is full. I stop to take a picture, long enough to hear my screaming muscles. By mile seven, twilight lands on the Staten island ferry, by eight and a half there’s a cool breeze over the Brooklyn bridges and you try not to remember how tired your legs, how unmoored your heart. At mile ten I land on a smooth, flat rock in the dark, an old Chinese woman next to me stretching noncommittally. The east river tears up a show of splashing waves and deep green turmoil, how desperately I long to feel the ocean around me again. When I stand again, my legs have all but forgotten how to move, how to stretch and contract, how to want anything. But my mind is clear, the incessant chatter silent.

Perfect summer evening in New York. We are alive. That is all. That is everything.

Black Cab

Charles Bukowski talks to me again; it's been a while. He stares at me from under those heavy eyebrows, as he does, and scoffs. Is this where you thought you were going? You called the wrong person. He takes a long gulp of some unnamed liquid, spills ashes all over, what does he care. You drink water because it's a school night and you have all these things still hanging around your to-do list. He looks at you in disdain, so finally his face mirrors yours.

A stranger speaks to me of the possibility of life on other planets. He says maybe I'll see you soon then, and you wonder if we'll ever make it far enough into space that it feels like something. You set the bar high, and then move it to the impossible. Bukowski is pleased with that, certainly,  but now his ash is all over your white page and you forget what your to-do list wanted you to say: instead all there is is piles of poetry, all there is is the American night and word at your side, you filled your bag with chaos and euphoria, how do you explain to a stranger you sold your sanity for a pocket full of mumbles and is it even worth trying?

Bukowski pours me a drink. I take it. There's smudges of ink on my fingers, a trail of stardust in my wake. We don't have to say anything at all.

In the Sky

A day comes and goes underneath the soles of your feet. You are running, if only metaphorically, it pays almost the same currency. A smile on my shoulders, a tired ache in my muscles that satisfies,  do you know that once you start running it's hard to stop, that's the trick. One day I stepped off the hamster wheel, one day I started writing a book, one day I opened my eyes and decided to live a life, do you know I haven't stopped yet. It doesn't take much to make me smile these days, I think my heart is a helium balloon.

I know I drown a hundred times each week.
But every time I get the chance to fill my lungs with air,
it's like I forget I was ever even wet.

Bramble

I sleep a thousand sleeps, in broad daylight my body bows out, says this is all I can do, it sets and resets, gets caught in grooves too deep to climb, perhaps this is a Life. Every day we put one foot in front of the other, every day we do just the best that we can. I ran so fast along the river tonight I thought I was flying, scores of holiday revelers lined up along sunset colors and glimmering skyscrapers. My body aches, my mind screams, every day is an exercise in keeping your legs kicking enough to stay above the surface, every day you didn’t die is a day you won, you collect trophies like dishes in the sink. 

Do you think one day we’ll do more than just survive?

Nevermind

Summer arrives to the little island at the edge of the world, streets steaming and skin exposed. My shoulders burn and I can't be sorry. The stores fill with Georgia peaches, pennies by the pound, I fill my bags with their sunshine. When I first moved to America we had a garden with peach trees, apricot trees, sprinkler systems, I thought we had moved to Paradise, I didn't know one could have this for real. We climbed fences and played late night pickup in the neighbor's driveway, had sleepovers on the lawn and scaled the roof from the bathroom window, Simon and Garfunkel in the tape deck and long road trips through the desert West. When I first moved to America it was like we were living our very own dream, my memory of those first years is like a book I keep reading and re-reading, like I know every dog eared page between its covers and it made me who I am at the core. And with every summer that arrives since then, the fresh cut grass smells like America, my own warm skin feels like America, with every summer I am reminded that I started dreaming one August evening and no one
ever
made me
stop.

Meditate

The office building is quiet, Saturday morning and everyone knows someone with a boat, or at the very least a backyard barbecue.  One lone violinist rehearses next door, their melancholy scales climbing the cardboard walls, and I smile at the company. Did I not wake in sunshine this morning? Did I not remember that this life is mine for the taking and I have every opportunity to make something astounding of my time with it? My tooth forgot to hurt then; I let it rest.

There was a moment yesterday,  when the bus twisted around the turnpike and Manhattan appeared like a gift in every window, the elusive jungle cat to a hoard of eager safari participants, when I couldn't stop my chest from swelling, my head from giggling. After so many years of this, it begins to dawn on me that I may never stop, that this jumble of buildings, this chaos of people, will always beat its way past my every last cynical defense and soften the edges of my heart. I welcome the humility.

So you see perhaps they weren't commitment issues, after all; I just knew not to settle for anything less than magic.

Vampire

Water towers along America, an entire country’s history plays out across your bus window, the driver says he’s been with greyhound for 26 years and seen every corner of this land a hundred times over. Married my sweetheart right out of high school, ran to the court house and straight back to school after, that was 38 years ago now and I just say ain’t that something, because it is. 

We stood on the front row, replacement parents with all the pride our eyes could bear, as a young man walked across the stage and accepted proof of how far he’d come. The valedictorian stepped up, said I wasn’t lost so much as diverted, and you think maybe her words apply regardless the road you are walking. You’ll get where you’re meant to be going. Just put one foot in front of the other, just do the best that you can, honey if you could see what I see here from the front row, your eyes would be brimming, too.