I walk through the streets. My city. My people: the lost, the annoyed, the angry, the oblivious. We’re all going somewhere and everyone else is in the way.

I weave, I thread my way through to get underground: entranced sightseers, daring teenagers, nurses off double shifts, exquisitely tailored bros. All in my way. They stand between my city and our home.

Because the city belongs only to me, it is mine. The city is a proud, lonely place. it’s for cutting teeth and harsh wind tunnels and sweaty piles of garbage. It’s for drunken wild moon nights and sober blistering days in the park. It is not for friends or for lovers. It is not for families. It is for your soul only. It is for your very own sense of brutality and kindness.

But, our home, our home belongs to all of us. It’s where I can breathe and be held. Where I can find rest. It’s where I can be touched with warmth, by his mischievous smile when he tells a lie, her pout when I refuse to play the guitar with her, and of course you: where there is no me, there is only us and ours.

And between my city and our home they all crowd in my way: miserable waiting on the corner, miserable crossing the street, miserable in the stairways, the tunnels, miserable on the train, miserable between seats. Misery sitting next to me.

I wish I could tell them, lean over and whisper into their ear, I know, I know why you are the way you are: my city doesn’t love you and you don’t have a home.

My love,

I cannot. I cannot you. I cannot believe you exist. I wake up every morning and you’re gone and I say to myself, that’s right, this was all a sham, a fever dream. I don’t recognize this place without you. I don’t recognize this life. You’ve become so ingrained in it any deviation from it is unreal, a nightmare.

I cannot. I cannot you. I cannot believe you are here with me, years after years and it works, you make it work, no, that’s not right. You it easy. You make it effortless. And I know there is toil. And I know there is exhaustion. I know not every day is a basket of fruit or flowers or chocolates. But for you, you make it wonderful. You make it joyful. All the little things, all the gestures, all the faces, the nuances, the gait, the walk, the stumble, the sudden change in pitch, the tears of your laughter. I cannot imagine it. What stone were you cut from?

I cannot. I cannot

when i was young, i longed for the night, a desperate desire to be free and roam the streets, to walk through the shadows, a ghost fleeting through headlights

now i am older and i dread the night, i long for the day, to be embraced by the heartless sun, to feel its grace, its heat, to be seen before i disappear

There is a point where, well, everything is just crazy. Things are happening fast but everything seems so slow. We want to get there, but have no idea where there is and maybe there’s no real rush to arrive. It’s warm here, why leave? And this singular moment is stretched thin under such tension that something’s gotta snap. And it does, from time to time. All the frustration and fear lashes out like a whip on a drill, striking the people we love the most, innocent bystanders too close for their own good, and even ourselves. No matter how firmly we place our feet on the ground, how deeply we dig in our heels, we’re pulled forward kicking and screaming, our hands burned from the rope tied around our waists, and it starts all over again.

Maybe it’s different for you. I spend a lot of time imagining you, what you would say, how you see and hear the world. What does it all mean through your eyes? Maybe this time is all bells and whistles and an eagerness to blow this one horse town. Maybe the future is an invitation to a life you’ve been longing to get to and we’ve been the anchor desperately holding you in place. Maybe our hopes and fears are burdens that you just wish you could pivot, shrug and be free of. We mean you no harm. And what do we mean to you? I think, he would think that’s a stupid question, can’t you guys see? There is a certain kind of blindness that I’ve tried over the years to see past, to account for. The parent that sees no wrong in their child. The father that sees too much of something they disapprove of. Sometimes I think I see you truly, as you are, and I am overjoyed. Sometimes you remind me I don’t have the slightest clue and I have to redo all my calculations and stipulations.

I have to say, the last couple of years have been heartbreaking for me. Not for the reasons that you think. We talk about having shared long days together when you were younger, before you started going to school. Quiet, timeless moments. And while I long for those days that’s not what saddens me. It is not the intervening years that were tumultuous (somewhat, gotta give you some credit here: you were a far better teenager than I ever was). What hurts is we are continuing to build the thing we started all those years ago. That it was always being built but we took it for granted. We entering into new territory and I fear I didn’t bring enough material to make sure it’s steady. I’m mixing up metaphors here, but that’s what I do. I pivot and dodge, I shuffle and escape. If my number one fear back then was never being privy to your three year old mind, imagine what it’s like now when you’re a fully rational being.

You must be thinking, old man, what the heck are you talking about? Let me make it clear, I love you Michael. I am proud of you and find you wonderful. There are times I cannot take my eyes off of you. I miss you. And not because you are not right in front of me, it’s hard to explain. I don’t want to interfere. I don’t want to correct you or give direction. I simply want to keep watching this show of your life. After all, each season keeps getting better and better.

Happy birthday

always,

me

i’ve been surfing lately
i cant help it, i cant look at it
i can’t stop, there’s this and this and that
someone i pass by laughs, ‘you aint got time to lie’
and i surf and surf, mantra in my head, i aint got time
i aint got time to look under the surface, i know
it’s an angry mass of grief and gnarled fingers
weaving and knuckles pressing into each other
desperate for purchase, and it’s hundreds
of hands, right there, look, right there under the surface
but i aint got time, i’m surfing, i’m outta here

my love,

I was such an idiot. Standing at the altar, refusing to turn around. I must’ve looked so smug, but I wasn’t. I was excited, I didn’t want anything to go wrong, I didn’t want to jinx it. Wasn’t I not supposed to see you until the ceremony. But today was the ceremony, how dumb. But I was happy. This was really happening, the thing that I thought would never happen. The dream that woke me up in tears when I was thirteen: I couldn’t see her face, I couldn’t see her but she was in my arms and I was loved and in love, she was right there but I couldn’t see her. And here she was, walking up the aisle and I wouldn’t turn around. I was proud. Proud that I made it this far, that we made this real.

Isn’t this life insane? So many things we’ve been through. The faxes, the emails, the IRC chat rooms, scrambling around airports, walking through Paris, unimpressed with London, tight hotels, lazy motels, playing house in Albany, being bohemian, our little apartment which was bigger than we needed because spent all our time in the bedroom. Moving back to New York, trying to be adults, looking for a home to start a family, we had started a family, ioanna, then michael, the first flood, then the second, the parade of cars, the anger, the fights over money, the fear of something precious being lost, and yet, we go on, one off to the college, the next in the wings, but still you. Still the joy of you. The woman of my dreams who I couldn’t bear to see her face, who I couldn’t bear to see on our wedding day, who I cannot wait to return to.

There is nothing in this world that means to me more than you.

always,

me

Dear Baba,

Thank you. Thank you for all the times you listened and you had no idea what I was talking about and for the times that you did understand. Thank you for being patient with me when I was outrageously wrong and letting me make my own mistakes. Thank you for stopping me when I went too far. Thank you for laughing with me and thank you for getting angry when I’ve been taken advantage of. Thank you for disagreeing with me but supporting me nonetheless. Thank you for the advice I didn’t ask for but sorely needed to hear. Thank you for always keeping the door open and thank you for always picking up the phone. Nobody is a perfect father, but you come pretty damn close.

Love you.

my love,

I’ve written of you being a shore. I’ve written of the compassion with which you have woven our lives. I’ve written of bright memories with our children. Year after year, your vitality, your strength, the promise you have kept, the light in the dark, the warmth against the winter.

You would think it would get easier, you would think it’s a toy that we’ve assembled and turned the crank and we let out into the world and just watch them

She:
there’s beauty everywhere. or we splatter it on all we can see. we’re the ones that we capture it. take it all in and jumble it all in our bellies and make it beauty. were the only ones that can process it. we’re the ones creating it. oh how lovely it is to be under the spell of love. to hold it in my pouch and feel it in my elbows, wringing it day in day out. it’s the grease that keeps me moving. keeps as all moving. a tiny thing which isn’t actually very tiny at all. it’s the needle that weaves itself through us all, pinning us to the ground, tying us to the skies. it is a fragile, single thread, and yet we are still here anyway. i thought for the longest time love was weakness. but actually love is the strongest force. it has to be, without it, none of us would be here and everything would be apart. but that thin single thread, it is solid, it is strong. it cannot be created. it cannot be destroyed. all it does is transforms. through all its changes, it is still always love. it could never not tie us together.

I:
very reminiscent of “I know that love is the only thought and pain is the only feeling”

the question for me is, what is this love that we feel? it is not eros, it is not quite agape, it is not either of those things. so what binds us? what are we forgetting in our toils? what is the static that jars and unnerves us? i cannot say i love everyone, there is too much brutality, there is too much vying for the things that keep us alive. but i love the concept of everyone, i yearn for peace, i yearn for rest, for everyone to be at rest, to hold everyone and say, ‘you can rest now, i got you’

i’ve become hardened, i’ve become a machine, not all armor, perhaps an armadillo. and the word sounds funny and ridiculous because it ultimately it is. how ridiculous we all are, balled up in our hardened shells, careening off of one another

Always there, waiting, tugging, a constant threat, I bury it so deep and I think I am ok, I fool myself I am ok, I can tell myself I am ok and I am whole and I can stay steady, but it’s a sham, a lie, a palm obstructing the view of everything gyrating out of control on a wild axis and it mocks me, it says, ‘soon, soon this will all be mine and I will tear it asunder before your very eyes’

But someone else says, ‘this is what you signed up for’
They pick me up, ‘you cannot afford this’
They snarl, ‘snap the fuck out of it’