Trains to New York City

He loved the city...

He loved the city the way you loved a lover...an intimate.  The way you were always a visitor but never home.  Each trip revealed something new, something unique...the way a sunset reflected off of a particular window of a particular building...new colors, new scents.  But there were constants...the same things that continuously brought him joy in his return.

The city was young enough to be beautiful, but old enough to carry it.  And wear it well.

A lot of the city was unknown to him...she would not reveal.  But what she did was lovely...and many times tender.  A lot of times though she remained quiet, and leaving him guessing.  And when he departed as he always did he wasn't ever sure if she would be found watching him disappear.

Even if time and space inserted itself between them his love for the city never waned.  And stepping out from the steps of Penn Station he felt that familiar energy, the familiar heartbeat of this place he so strongly wanted to call home...but he would never arrive at that.  It wasn't to be.  It couldn't be.  She kept her dark-eyed heart in the long concrete miles and soaring tops of buildings.

But while there she would provide, and she would reflect.  And she would allow him to enter this little kingdom of Gotham and for awhile make him feel like he possessed a part of her.

He loved the city the way you loved a lover...a confidant.  To anticipate the return...but never know quite when it would happen.  Just knowing that it would and that he would feel the exact same thing that he always felt.  However long ago it had been.

Meds

There was always this one move, this one gesture...it was normally when they were reacquainted after a bit of time and the nearness was still a burden...like strangers (but not strangers) who slowly circled each other, slight feints, movements...testing comments and dialogue...slowly perhaps growing comfortable...an iron slowly warming once plugged in.  She would reach out to grab him...sometimes after a bit of a joke, or a sentence that was playful but had potential...perhaps damaging or cutting but meant with no harm.  She would reach out to him and in that extension he knew that the bits of ice that had formed between them had melted, and she was warming to him.  He loved that moment when her arm extended and she clasped him, even if for just a second.

Because she was his prescription.

His medicine.  The dull pain that was usually an absence that throbbed into full blown ache when he dared to let her weigh on his mind with the slight weight of her physical memory against him.

He could not take her daily...she wouldn't allow it.  Rather, dispensed like a cautious drug it was taken in snippets...hours...day parts that were allowed.  While there was never any chance of over-indulging she never let it become the risk.

She portioned off her parts to him like a recovering addict slowly weans off the one thing he cannot live without.

And he would never know when she would provide...never knew when she might appear.  Never knew when she might allow.  The addiction was just as much the mystery as it was the attainment.

She kept herself from him...as much as she kept herself for him.

All he knew was this...that the absence was a blade, and in its continuous portion it drew itself against him in a lengthy cut that was to a bone...a cold, lingering cut of flesh that flayed and exposed and felt like a toothache in his soul.  But small certain bits...little tiny portions of her that she gave to him in words and in writings completely mended...suturing his suffering and pouring warm oils in his wounds and binding them in cloth that she once wore.

He could smell her in the bindings...the sweet scent.  It invaded him and reminded him of her.

It was enough for him to fall asleep...quietly coddled in her sharing, her parts of her that mended him with her memory, her close glance against him, the sweet science of her fixing him and his bitter broken bits...

Only to awaken and find himself completely splintered and deconstructed...adrift and away from her and broken with her absence.

To start the day again, away from her.

Again.

Halfway

We are halfway through the year with the shortest day signaling the start of the cold portion of Winter.

The nights are no longer as long as they've been...each day, hour by hour they will brighten slightly.  Imperceptibly.

What the sky doesn't reveal is they will remain so glaringly long across the distance between us.  Across the hours and time and moments...across roads and traffic.  Across state lines, blurred lines.

I hate the start of winter, but candidly it has been winter for some time now...

Although every once in awhile, when we dart into each other, on that rare occasion, it crams an entire summer's day into the heat and smashes the distance into an inch that I so rapidly want to close quietly, in a brief and elegant silence...that lasts like the longest day of the year.

Pieces of you stuck in me

It was cold...that he remembered.  The kind of cold that was blanketing...it sought out your ears, your neck...your hands.  It blew unkindly into him...it was grimacing.

But as he walked past the Christmas tree lot he slowed...the lure of the lights, the scent of the pines.  The hawkers extolling the virtues of their trees, the spirit of the piped-in music...it felt like a holiday, like a time that was worth slowing down and tucking away minutes into your pocket so you could relax, could realize...it was that...a realization.

He dialed her up as he stood freezing, gazing at the trees pristine in their condition, knowing they only had weeks to live.

He got her voicemail.  Hey...I'm just standing here in the biggest city of the world...and they have these amazing christmas trees...amazing probably because there are so very few trees in this city so it's this dichotomy...and anyways, I just wanted to tell you---
and then the call stopped, the recording space cut out.  He looked at his phone.

Fuck.

He stood amongst the greens and the lights and the dark sky above with the million lights of the city.  He stood beneath a smeared full moon that everybody could see and appreciate...but he harbored the secret that he was one of the so very few that knew her, and had seen her, and could appreciate her for the very things that were unique and worth studying.

He glanced down and noticed a needle fallen on the ground, a green sliver from a tree in the lot.  He picked it up, this sparse remnant of the full blown tree and put it in his palm.  Its tiny point pricked him, bit into his skin like teeth, incisors, sharp and pointy.

He looked at his phone again.  Thought about calling.

Like the piece of the tree that had fallen, like the tiny needle in his hand, he merely wanted to be part of her...actually he took that back.  He wanted to be a bigger part of her...he actually wanted to tell her that he wanted to be the city to her, the moon smeared across the sky...the first thing she saw at night and the first thing she saw in the morning.  That he wanted to be in her view, in her eyesight.  He wanted to bring her packages and favors...that he would wrap her in warmth like a coat from a closet, and unwrap her in an evening when she came home...that he would draw baths for her and hold the towel when she emerged.

She was the evening, the darkened beauty against a city full of lights, the curve of the earth when the sun first touched...she was the crisp stark features of night against the cold, the weight of a hand that was held in a snowstorm...the way you get out of the weather...indoors and safe.  He wanted her to be there, wanted her to share there...to be clothed and close.  Bulky clothes and layers but ultimately a mouth that was warm and inviting.  Allowing.  He held up the small needle and realized she had been inside him all this time, like this tiny part, piercing and bleeding...feeling alive and loving, warming, touching.  He didn't call her back, but he knew what he would say the next time she was next to him.