New

It's just a few steps, past the birch trees, at the end of the path. Warm cliffs, smoothed by the ice ages, sloping down to the salty waters of the west coast. We find a spot near the shoreline, arrange the day as it has been for decades: coffee thermoses, homemade sandwiches, store-bought biscuits. They brought you here because they know how much better you breathe when your eyebrows whiten, when your shoulders brown and your lips taste of the sea. They brought you here because they know how four years away ache in your very bones.

Somehow, four years are magically washed away with one dive into the ocean, one evening at their dinner table. Somehow, none of the empty days and quarantined miles remain in your spine, though they were lodged there like splinters every day that came before. I sleep so well at night, it's hard to believe the darkness was ever that close. 

Something new is coming, but not yet, not now. 

Now we rest.
Now, we breathe.

Land

Upon arrival, three years of absence are wiped from your slate. Nothing has changed. The fields still rolling, the industrial edges of the large town continue their brutalist boxes of utilitarianism. The weather is lagom: not good, not bad, it just is, unoffensive, gray skies and soft ripples of sunshine, you feel no certain way about it. Boulders of the countryside whisper of giants playing games, the woods speak of trolls, you believe all of it because what is not to believe. At the train station, the conductor is flustered, yelling into the crowds that we got the wrong train set and it's each person for themselves, grab a seat if you can find it. I find a window seat so that when jet lag invariably finds me, I do not lean on a neighbor. As a child I loved the trains - always this sense of adventure, always a suspension of rules and reality. I feel that way still. 

Three years of absence like they never were. Entire relationships, families, new children have appeared in the space between. You think you are the same, but it is not true. An entire earthquake has come and gone. Every cell in your body has been exchanged for a new one. Some of them dented, some of them stronger than the ones which came before. It is too soon yet to say who you are now. 

You are older.
You are entirely new.

Gate B68

At some point in the late morning, the system clicks into place. Old neural pathways spring to life, like there was just dust on the wires and it’s coming off. In a trance I finish work, undaunted by the unpleasant emails. I set up the OOO while I water the plants, clean out the fridge and weigh the suitcase. Rush to Penn station in a thunderstorm, could walk the steps to the terminal with your eyes closed, arrive much to early, recognize the skyline view from the window. 

How many years of coming and going, each time grateful that Most goodbyes are not forever. A strange few years lie behind us. We are not out of these woods yet. 

But oh, how sweet just the light where the forest parts. 

Packed

The thunder amasses in the distance, readies itself to pummel the coastline just as my itinerary fires up. The city lies beaten by the heat, unable to move, unwilling to smile the way it normally does. I wander around the apartment looking at pieces of clothing not touched in ages. Wonder is this who I am now? Is this someone I could be? before weighing the outfits against my own self-awareness. A suitcase fills up. A world that nearly feels post-pandemic rises up on the horizon. There's a hope in your chest you haven't felt in years. Years. The loss is inconceiveable. 

But there's nothing to say the revenge can't be
beyond your imagination.

Re:lax

I take the day off. Walk all the way around the little village early in the morning, before the heat swelters. The Hudson river looks like a fat snake, too hot to move. I sit on the back porch reading children's fantasy, think only I can do better (I have done better) and devour another hundred pages. The day slips between my fingers, rivulets of sweat coursing down my body, the summer escapes me, the life escapes me, I feel like the answer is here, right here somewhere just out of my reach, tip of my tongue, I know there is some sort of magic and we can touch it - I have touched it before - if only I could have one more moment, if only I could pause the world for just a little longer I think I could catch it again, I...

In my mind, I know the futility. 

But the promise of gold at the end of the rainbow is forever what moves us forward into the life.

Wild Woods

You arrive in the country. It is all rolling hills and unstoppable vines in overwhelming humidity. Something inside your brain clicks. A switch is turned. An inability to hustle appears, a reset, a lack of grit. You forget your computer three flights up and pick up a book instead. You see your email inbox twist and weave but figure out how to ignore it entirely. It turns out to be easier than you thought. 

One night we drink too much and stay up talking about obscure music and house hunting. Topics of no consequence, only delight. The next day I have to sleep half the day just to recover. It rains in torrents, as if forgiving the slight. There are no grand thoughts, no wild plans. Only still morning walks down to the river. Only silence inside my otherwise constantly humming body. Silence. What a concept. 

I close my computer again. Find a cup of coffee. Find the book again. Sit on porch steps and think absolutely nothing. 

Summer came for me at last.

Time

July races to its ends. Leaves that recently were bright sprouts darken, grow tired, I know how they feel. As you grow, you realize that you cannot go back again, you cannot start over, you will not have your entire future ahead of you. On the radio, a voice you know from your youth speaks of loss, of grasping at straws, of allowing every last vein within your skin to feel the immensity of the world. How we are insignificant. 

Once, years ago, when you felt you had everything left to live and all the immensity of the world ahead of you, you said

Nothing really matters

which means that everything does 

You get to choose what your life will have been about. Perhaps it doesn’t matter then how much time you have left to confirm it.