Tag: new york city

I received a message: “I’m gonna keep visiting you so… we have a lifetime.”

And it kind of felt like this avalanche came crashing down onto my deserted heart. This realization that I’ve been treating everything in my life as temporary. To protect myself. New York City does that to you. I think in hours, days, sometimes months. Everything is finite. The light, the warmth, the space, the cold, the seasons when half a pint of blueberries costs $13, the waits for the subway, the eternal pulse of the night, the snowstorms, the leaves changing, the feeling that someone loves you. The hope that someone may want your company for longer than a few hours, for more than just your body. It is so much easier to convince yourself that it is all momentary, ephemeral.

I command it to be, so that when it ends (as it inevitably will), I’ll be prepared.

I flinch at “lifetime” or “always.”

But today. “We have a lifetime” calmed everything down. Everything felt less urgent, so still. Like it was okay to believe that someone will stand in the sun with me. And keep me company while I make jam. And that the light will linger.

“…none of us can get
far enough away from each other
and none of us can get close enough.”
– Dean Young

more notes on summer (scribbled during subway rides)

I.

A feint of heart is not for the faint of heart.

II.

Little secrets of bare feet running across silky, groomed grass. The river lapping at the edge of weary concrete.

The roots of spreading sunset clinging to the fertile clumps of clouds, blooming into bursts of orange and purple in the end.

The leftover-from-spring dried flower petals clinging to hair and legs and following us as far as the subway floors.

Handstands against tree trunks and barefoot soccer and somersaults in the air, clumsy and hesitant and gleeful and finally just fuck-it-let’s-just-go-all-in. Bruises everywhere but brushing it off like, so what, next time I’ll make a winning goal. All of the above reminding me of the way we sometimes feel stumbling through this life, I suppose. What’s the fun in being absolutely certain all the time, anyways?

It’s a summer of turning upside down, of being unafraid to fall slowly backwards, then down, then all the way around until face is turned back upwards to the sky and back is snuggled against the earth.

Of taking the long-long-longest route home, then making up excuses to make it longer still.

Is there a risk in wanting more even after you were convinced the desire would be finite?
Is there a chance that you risk the darkness to be left with the stars?

Soak, sink, simmer, swim. Braise and laze, all up in a daze. Sun flares and double dares.

All the men smiling and flirting, catching your eyes only because it’s finally warm outside. And all the sexy SoHo girls showing their perfect legs, and I’m all like, “It’s no wonder no one wants to settle down here.” It’s a glorious free fall, you know, all this.

So who would ever wanna land?

***

III.

*These summer notes will sound endless, resonating. But these notes are scalable, you know. Heh, you so punny. 


   

was hurrying on my way to something. still,  i took a breath to stand still and listen to the sound of saxophone as it wrapped itself around me.

it was slow, aching, craving- the type of jazz reserved for the moments between dead-of-night and almost-dawn when the syncopation of bodies match that sort of rhythm.

it felt naked and blooming and vulnerable when stretched out in noontime sunlight.

so bloom, baby, bloom.

I know I am but summer to your heart, and not the full four seasons of the year.

– Edna St. Vincent Millay

but oh what a summer i can promise.