Athens

There is something about the ease

Of a country road run

Of a day in the sun

Of forgetting the time and the demands 

That leaves you a little bit closer

To who you thought you were 

(And who you thought you could escape being

But that is not the point now)

Sure Know Now

I rush up Greenwich, swerve north on 8th Ave, overstuffed bag on my back and only assumptions of time in the mess of my head. Throw the bike at Penn Station and tie a mask back on my face before sinking into the underground. The train is empty, I pick a seat by the river, I'll not miss its quiet peace again.

I spent the morning procrastinating, in that indulgent way writers like to do, futzing about, jotting down illegible notes and pacing, panicking mildly by sorting through busy work that should have been attended months ago and which suddenly seem imperative, until finally sitting down to write and finding it already having written itself in my head while I tried to avoid it. They say there is no magic to writing, you just do it, but I think they don't know what magic is. It's the magic that keeps us coming back for more, the magic that makes us cut through that scar tissue again and let the light in, it's that once you have felt love at your fingertips everything else seems less than and you are no longer content to run it along your skin.

The train pummels down the track at sunset, cracks of pinks and apricots through amassing clouds, a trickling reflection of seaweed greens in the snaking river. Ahead, bands of lighting dance down the mountains. Eventually all goes black. I breathe deep into my mask, feel the sadness run out of me.

There is too much to life yet. My heart swells over in gratitude, and if that isn't magic,

then maybe I don't know what magic is,

either.

Motion

Do you know, the trouble with pain, is you spend so much time trying to just get over it, and never feel it again, that you make a subconscious deal with yourself to keep all the armor in place indefinitely. You start to forget what it was like to be delirious with joy, to smile in the depths of yourself, to feel, for just a moment, like life was easy. Ignorance is bliss, they say, or at least it's peaceful. If I can't remember the wild highs of joy I am able to reach, then perhaps I won't know to miss them.

I didn't think I'd be content just to settle.

But this scar tissue is so thick. The calls of the Life are too muted to hear.

Corals

I go to bed nearly on time, and wake at dawn from a hundred dreams. Do you remember in March, how much we dreamed? How much time our minds had to process the unearthed millenia? Everything races ahead now, but hobbling, like hubcaps spinning out of control after a traffic accident and eventually they just vibrate until they lie flat and still on the burning concrete. My tan is fading.

Renovations across the street carry on. I scroll through apartment listings like they have answers to questions I have yet to describe in words. Every day is a heatwave. My legs are so tired from crossing this island, but oh how I love it all the same. Love is what happens in crisis.

Do you remember what it was like to be happy?

Underwater

Days pass, run, fly past, tear at my limbs and demand things of me. I fall asleep in nightmares, and forget them as soon as I jolt awake. Heatwaves pummel the city, tsunamis of tumble dry heat, pools of sweat at every street corner, conditioner air scratching my throat and I run so slowly in the morning sun. I book another ticket out of the city.

When at last everything stops, I tumble into the proverbial grass of my livingroom couch, lie in apathy for a full day staring into high definitioned nothingness, feel myself falling out of my own hands, remember that this is what the centrifuge does and the answers evade me. I stare a little longer, set an alarm, write a to do list that only aims to remind me who I am. I begin to check it off.

And then, at last, a voice returns to me. Scrambled at first, rushing through the list, rushing through the day, it is distorted and distant, I only catch it in brief pauses between the traffic, but it comes back slow and steady like the tide until it is unmistakably here. On my screen, I look out a hundred other windows, find connections and distance all in one, look out my own window and remember I am, I am, I am, I look at my fingertips and see a thousand unwritten stories lay themselves out and begin to speak. The sun sets over a heatwave. A ticket lies in my inbox. I am, I am, I am. I disappear, sometimes, I fall into tangled pieces, but I always come back.

I'm always here, in the end.

Tappan-Zee

I stepped off the train and walked straight into oblivion. It takes days to unravel what Spring wound up, the stress of a city under siege sits in my muscle memory and I dare not trust the cool grass under my bare feet. We pack up the car and drive winding roads into the forest, lose reception, lose electricity, find a small glen with our names on it, build a little home for a few days. I swim in a quiet lake every day, wake to birdsong at dawn. We make fires at night, roast marshmallows and watch the sun set across the ridge. I run around the lake, trekking through forests that look like my childhood and I have just as much fun making it an obstacle course adventure now as in my youth, and perhaps that's what nature is. Permission to let yourself play. Permission to believe the whole world is an undiscovered piece of clay between your fingers, that you are insignificant and singular all at once. Perhaps it's only chemical and we never ventured further from our maker than that it will forever call us to it.

On the way back, I select a seat with a view of the river. Watch it lazily snake its way to the ocean, sometimes impossible to distinguish from when the first people settled here, wild and overgrown and comforting. I return to a steaming cauldron of iron and glass, return to concrete and hustle. But I have air in my lungs now I haven't felt in months. I have summer in my skin that will not wash off in the tub.

Gives Me More Time

Sometimes you gather red flags under your belt, thinking what does it matter to know better when you barrel ahead regardless? I pick the wrong side of the train, watching parking lots and wild vines instead of the Hudson River Valley, bury myself in work, try to forget that it is my first time breathing the air with other people in a contained space since it was still winter. I wipe down the seat with my antibacterial wipes.

It smells like 2020.