Day 12: Paper-Wrapped Parcels

Pick up your parcels with trembling hands,

your bundles wrapped in brown paper and tied with rough string.

Line your shelves with packages to be opened,

one at a time,

and fill them with flowers that bloom and then fade.

Lay out your trepidation to dry in the sunlight cartwheeling eager through your window.

Stretch yourself on the cool wooden floorboards,

arms spread wide enough to grasp the edges of your vision and pull it further,

to open for yourself the world beyond the contours of this one,

and untie in slow succession the carefully-fastened bows enclosing your post,

the spiderweb writing of far-off correspondences and the warm gifts of friends.

There is no fear to be had in the sunshine.

Day 11: Head Cold

My head is stuffed with cotton and I am deaf in one ear,

or near enough to hear only the soft reverberations of words,

like mutterings or apologies, half swallowed and rolled around beneath the tongue.

I am surely developing a rightward tilt,

my body leaning to catch the world in my one good ear,

my senses maneuvering past the soft, thick clouds rooted in my skull.

The thing at the back of my throat, at least, approves heartily,

grumbling and ruffling and spouting its apologies in gasps and bursts,

scratching in satisfaction up and down between my chest and the roof of my mouth,

longing achingly to stretch itself out beyond the reaches of my sinuses and my ear canals,

traversing the insides of my head like thick, red mercury.

Day 10: Only Just Beginning

What I’m looking for is

somewhat out of reach,

in someone else’s pasture,

stretched out in a greener field far away.

But who said in the first place

that I was much good at knowing what I needed,

that the things I think are always right,

that I am looking for the things that will satisfy my yearning hands?

I’m old enough to have found more joy

in things I’ve half-forgotten

than I ever would have thought to hold,

and to be buoyant now,

for the hope of things unsought.

Day 9: Pirate Ships

a bit late, again:

 

There’s enough rain outside now

for pirate ships

and low-visibility voyages,

for islands of light across endless seas gathered from cloud and air.

The lightening is blinding white,

hot white, the kind of brightness that suggests burns and camera flashes,

and leaves stark afterimages on the inside of my eyelids,

forked and clear in the darkness.

There is rain enough here to wash the decks of our vessels clean,

buffeting us in the tempest until we emerge into daytime,

bright and clear and full of the smells of salt and cold water,

and see behind us all the rocks on which we were not dashed to shreds in the night.

Day 8: Wearing Away

a few days late, due to St Louis, absence of wifi, and illness:

 

My feet are peeling in three places,

the layers of skin separating under strain and weariness.

It’s a little like the way I’ve started to unravel my edges,

as if to see what’s underneath,

as if to test the limits of this whole.

As if to wait to grow back again, new and soft,

skin over skin, in the places I’ve worn through.

Day 7: To Forget to Be Fearful

There is a moment when I am lost

and I am certain that I will never find my way again,

that I will circle till morning, till evening, till dark,

on the spot where I have found myself rooted,

when the world shifts sideways and makes itself new,

and I see through the blurring of all my pent-up fear,

my fear of changing from the things I’ve known to the things I’m headed towards,

my fear of never being found,

that the world is beautiful, and bright with life.

And I forget, for a moment, my lostness, my fright,

and I forget that I do not know what I’m doing

and I forget to make myself think about things I think matter,

and I forget to be afraid of the days still to come,

because the world is beautiful, and bright with life,

and so many places to go.

Day 6: Finding Our Feet

Our days were steeped in faith and floundering,

in wondering who we would become,

and walking with surety in front of unfamiliar faces.

We were good at looking certain.

We were good at finding straight lines,

toes pointed forward, chins pointed high.

We sat in back rooms and worried in whispers,

and took pictures with always the unspoken promise,

we are going soon.

This has been forever,

and this is not the end.

Day 5: These Are City Lives

These smoke-lined streets

are sprawling with the beat-cobbled patterns of centuries of footfalls,

picking out grey and sombre veins between the places where lives are lived.

The sky is thick with coming rain,

deep and soft above the webworks of heads passing beneath.

There are the mutterings of soft wools and the shushing of leather against a cotton shoulder,

as people step, heads bowed against the wind, from moment to moment,

wearing troughs in the smoothed-out grounds beneath their scuffed toes and careless glances.

In their pockets are ticket stubs and crumpled paper and stray coins,

and the glimmerings of the city,

leaking behind them in puddles between the cobbles,

bright and new behind raised heels and eager journeys home.

Day 4: Getting Ready

We captured our voices today

in palm-sized plastic things that transported our crackling laughs across rooms,

and cracked bad jokes over our unnecessary headpieces while we shuffled microphones and light cues,

and it all felt very professional, and very teenage, and alive with the sparks of inbetween,

reminding us that we are not quite one thing, and not quite another,

but halfway both.

Day 3: Fitting

If the moon can stay in the sky all morning,

as it did on my walk this morning,

white and half-full, lazy and ever-present,

then I can belong in places that pinch at the corners

by wriggling my shoulders and sinking into place.

Because outgrown places can grow for me,

as I can grow into them.

And with a fistful of balloon strings and nets to catch the things I drift by

I can be comfortable high in the sky.

And armed properly for the battlefields of afternoons,

I can be comfortable in New York City too.