Re-enter

The woman sits down next to you, smells of a life without showers, mumbles quietly to herself in a language you do not understand. She brushes dirt off her pants, it falls into the bags around her. You could’ve stayed, in a different life perhaps you would have stayed, but you wanted the gentle rocking of a subway train after midnight, wanted that slow moment of quiet with your city, put words to wordless breaths. The train rolls in, leaves the woman at the station, her mask diligently on. She stares at the ground. 

He touches your collarbone and you think some bones will always be broken even after they heal. He asks about a wink in your eye and you wonder if the caverns carved into your chest will remain dark and unknowable forever. 

The mouse has returned, scampered across the kitchen counter when I caught it unawares. The Empire State beams its translucent light down to the streets. I bike the last of the way home, cool summer breeze in my hair and all the noise silent around me, 12th street like a secret. 

You could stay

You should stay

How long will you hold your breath?

Show Yourself

Wake early from strange dreams, unfamiliar faces with a familiar feeling in their skin linger along your fingertips, everything comes up poetry. Disorienting to rise, but unsurprising. Swallow your hope and carry on, awaiting the storm, awaiting the inevitable drops. He asks how do you live as a writer in New York and the only answer I can think of is poor. But when he asks why do you do it, you begin talking and do not come up for air until the Nolita crowd has grown young and the Bowery rowdy, you stare into distant starscapes and feel the blood in your veins soften, your spine align. The mouse does not appear for days but you are patient. 

You know a really good story
takes time to tell.

It’s Just Begun

Weekday night on spring street, a cool breeze through unruffled trees, I’ve stood in the Atlantic Ocean and watched wave after wave approach me and pass to shore, have stood against or been swept up, have wondered at perpetual motion and how we all turn to grains of dust in the end. 

The ocean swallows you whole. 

You hold your breath. Prepare to open your eyes. 

Are You Feeling Nervous?

I set more traps, try to anticipate moves and be one step ahead of a rodent brain, keep expecting the sound of guillotines when none are to come. I pack my bag. 

There was a time when every day did not begin in a brace, a time when mornings arrived with sore limbs and easy smiles, but it's hard to remember it now. How light a spirit can be, how heavy. 

The problem with taking this
one day at a time

is eventually you
will run out of days.

the Ocean's Rising

The insects are back, filling your insides with their scattering legs, their nervous fluttering of wings. They multiply in your gut, straining the tissue that holds you intact, tearing at your seams in frantic attempts at escape. 

Maybe they aren't trying to get out at all. Maybe they enjoy the cramped existence, the constant pecking reminder that they are alive. 

You wish they'd keep their reminds to themselves. 

I took a long walk along the river this morning, in dogged determination to live, some days I think this blind stubbornness is all that remains in my pocket. When you jumped off that bridge on New Years morning, all I could think was you were so determined to die, there was nothing anyone could have done to stop you, the mouse evades all my traps at night, it knows better. 

I know better. 

The cabin host writes again. Is it just you? 

The insects laugh. Dare you to open your mouth.

Bug

The little mouse comes out to test the waters, imperceptible darts from under the stove, feet so light you cannot hear them but my peripheral vision has been honed by years of New York tenement living, I know it before I know it. We make plans for drinks, he slides that sliver of hope into his intonation and you wonder if you'll ever remember what that feels like when it vibrates against your vocal cords. I turn around and book a cabin in the woods instead. There's no wi-fi, the host writes, but sometimes if you go back to the road there's one bar of cell service. 

I set a crown of mouse traps around the apartment. Bait them with a light at the end of the tunnel. 

Turn around and wait
for morning.

Like Humbug

Days disappear under piles of uselessness. The New York City Summer carries on underneath your thumb, or perhaps the opposite is true, what disaster your ragged bones continue to be. I bike home late in the night, drunk but not happy, weary but not tired. The days continue, as they will, one after another, refusing to veer off course. Friendly faces pass by, trying to gauge the color of your eyes, check your pulse, carry on.

You attempt to do the same. 

The illness lingers in your blood stream, hides in dark corners, converses with the demons. 

You arrange your firewood, collect the kindling. 

Wonder how much will burn in this next attempt to smoke it out.