seasons

It was summer, and the asphyxiating heat of the city did what no other place had before: it melted my rough edges. I had, by the end of it, softened.

I have never liked change. The strangeness of knowing nothing has, in the last four years, destroyed me, and the rough, dry air of the Australian coast did just the same. The occasional summer breeze was a gift from the gods. I walked Newtown every day, but the unfamiliarity of it all quickly sent me into exile. I had to prove myself to Sydney like I once did to New York. So, I lived the last breath of that summer in the confines of my room, taking in the distance I so intensely craved, the separation of who I'd been and the possibility of my becoming.

It was summer, and the heat, once asphyxiating, melted my rough edges; I softened.

Lost On The Road

You don’t have to pretend

And yes, it's true,

We are all misunderstood.

But if you don’t know who you are

Just know:

I don’t know where I am, 

Nor do I know where I am going.

I’ve been lost, but it led me 

Here. It brought me to you.

So,

Stay humming in the kitchen,

Stay on the rooftop, stare down the sunset,

Stay laughing at nothing,

Stay.

Waste your days,

I will be wasting them too.

Because being found is not what 

We have been told.

You and I both know 

That the home we dream of,  

Will never be again.

So roam the world, 

Get lost,

Be lost,

  Stay lost.

And when the road gets lonely 

And you are running around in circles

Remember that,

No one is someone

Who is lost on the road

Willing, if not, longing

To dance around your thoughts once more.

*

How fitting, how cruel. It was autumn, and I was starting to fall. Waking up to the crisp air of March kissing my skin was a foreign feeling, one I sadly became used to. At the time, I was still able to get out of my bed to greet the sun as the night fell. I had made friends, some good and most bad. But I, for the first time in the year, had started to feel the excitement and thrill of uncertainty. When I first arrived, I was under the impression I could be anyone, but by mid-March, I had given up. The sharp, chilled air, though threatening, was healing.

I was healing, I was learning, and I was falling.

How to Write a Love Poem

Think about something 

other than love. Think about 

how bad it feels 

to write about it, it hurts.

Allow yourself to be haunted 

once more. Let them finish

what they started.

Think about love, the word.

Can you trust it?

Can you trust

that it will encapsulate the 

resilience of this pain?

Scratch the word, love. 

Don’t use it. Don't write with it.

Don’t feel it. Scratch the poem.

Instead, write about the first time

you realized that if you let

yourself go,     you never make it back.

And try not to think about how 

they said you would make it back.

Because you are not

back, in fact, you have never returned.

*

I had survived many winters with a hypothermic heart. Warmth was never something I had, and though I longed for it, I never wished it for myself. That is because now that I am no longer exposed, now that I have known that warmth, I will never find it again. I had always wanted to endure because no one could convince me that this pain was not beautiful, and though it is, I cannot take it any longer. Sydney had mended and broken me simultaneously, and I would be lying to myself by resenting it the way I believe I do.

Because through the seasons, through it all,

there was still spring.

*

It is now mid-June. I am sitting on the southside bench, a year later. The kids are still laughing and it’s summer again. I am back where I started. It will always be me, my loneliness, and Central Park.