I feel better when you’re walking with me, as crazy as that might seem.
You grab my hand with your tiny hand, like sunlight cascading through a misty dawn.
Here we are, looking at the geese.
These days, I don’t know where I’m going.
That seems to be a theme with everyone I talk to —
we’re here, you’re there, who’s where?
My good friends, they might not make it.
My other good friends, they already lost it.
Some, a little older than us.
A little further ahead, maybe.
I see them make decisions,
I see them move into houses with staircases,
I see them disappear into something certain,
while I stay suspended in this half-light.
I’ve been having these crazy dreams lately.
I wish I wrote them down.
But I’ll try to remember something from somewhere.
Here’s one.
Luke and I were hiking, somewhere high,
where the air was thin and the trees whispered.
We climbed a ridge,
stood at the peak,
and the valley below was endless,
an ocean of green that stretched further than God.
He turned to me and said, You know, this was never real.
And I nodded, because I knew that too.
I’ve been dreaming of train stations, of platforms that stretch into the horizon,
but the doors never open, the destinations are written in languages I don’t recognize.
I watch people board, but my feet won’t move.
Too afraid to lean one way or another.
Too afraid of what that may do.
Then, there was that time.
She and I were tripping,
laughing under the streetlights of Nassau Avenue in Greenpoint,
watching the sidewalk crack open.
The sky pulsed blue and red and gold,
and I felt my heart beating everywhere at once as I felt the light shine on my skin.
She said, I think I just figured it out.
I asked what?
And she walked away.
Now, you and I were somewhere else.
Maybe a city. Maybe nowhere.
We were laughing, but I don’t know why.
I think we had just stolen something.
I think we were running.
The streetlights blinked behind us, more streetlights,
a slow, deliberate rhythm,
like something was counting down.
And then, I was driving a car, and you were still with me,
I made a wrong turn, and it launched off a ramp.
It flew high, and the wind whipped through the open windows.
My hand extended like an eagle’s wing.
We landed in the water and it rushed around us.
You said, If we want to live, we should get out.
The water rose and spun, but we could breathe,
and I could see the light breaking from underneath the surface.
Sunlight, again, sparkling like a misty dawn.
What if we ran towards the unknown?
I’ve seen this river before.
It’s the river I played next to as a child.
The river where I built a dam with my hands,
mud caked under my fingernails,
thinking I could stop something unstoppable.
Dig your fingers into the dirt.
Dig until you find springtime.
Maybe write that down.
Maybe it won’t make a difference.
These days, man, I don’t know.
Where were you when I needed you most?
I’ve been trying hard not to get into trouble,
but I’ve got a war in my mind.
Stuck by the river, you and I,
underneath a sky that keeps falling.
I’ll let you down, that’s a damn guarantee.
Years are just moments in a great big pile,
one tumbling over the next,
some sharp, some soft,
some impossible to pick up again.
My solipsistic view.
Plopped down, and I’m still coming round for you.
I remember attending that festival in Philadelphia.
Standing and waiting, waiting, and waiting,
I lifted you on my shoulders, you reached toward the stage,
bound to something, something neither of us could name.
The world was different then,
a place that seemed to make some sort of sense,
at least that’s how it feels now.
Or maybe that was the wisdom of youth.
Life ahead of me, life ahead of us, I knew all the answers.
And then shortly after you told me that it wasn’t working and included some emojis with your text message.
A week after that you told me you missed me.
I put on black Nike sneakers and walked with a bodega coffee, trying to make sense.
And now you’re married to a stand up comedian and I’m in these hills, wandering and wavering.
The air here is thinner.
Or maybe I just breathe differently now.
Sometimes the way windmills howl haunts my dreams.
I see the flickering red lights in the distance above the cornfields.
Sean and Jeff and I used to drive gravel roads.
Those Midwestern nights.
They’d smoke weed and I’d pass, not knowing I was making the wrong decision.
We’d stop the car, get out, and lean against my Oldsmobile Cutlass, listening to the Wu-Tang Clan as we tried to count the stars.
Miles of nothing, miles of everything.
It smelled like cut grass and diesel, like the storm was always just about to break.
Cultivate your own epiphanies, I suppose.
The other night, we sat by the fire.
You told me about this and about that.
I told you about that and about this.
The bush rustled and we jumped.
A deer bounded by.
Later, I asked ChatGPT what this deer meant.
It told me to pay attention to what’s ahead.
Look, sometimes I talk to the computer, all right?
I ask it to solve my problems.
I sit, and I type, and I hope.
We have more information than ever, and it’s never been harder to understand.
I watch the cursor blink like I watch the rain collect in the street outside.
I watch headlights skim across the ceiling of my house.
I watch my hands and wonder if they are different hands than the ones I had before.
I reread my dreams and wonder why I keep forgetting them.
The train never leaves. The car never lands.
The streetlights keep pulsing.
The water keeps rushing.
I wake up before we get to where we are going.
Maybe it sounds stupid, but I just thought this would be easier.
Let me learn the hard way, I suppose.
They say nature rewards bravery.
How lucky are we?
There was this Saturday in the springtime a few years ago,
next to the reservoir, high up in these hills.
The snowpack had just started melting, but it was still bare.
We sat in the bed of the lake next to the lapping water,
drinking beer and eating cheese.
Above us, two eagles soared,
spinning and spinning and spinning and spinning,
Every few moments, one would dive, reaching into the abyss.
Hours floated by.
The air was still.
The light was golden.
Everything hummed in its own quiet rhythm.
Nothing needed to happen unless it wanted to.
And then one of them dove so deep, we lost sight, and the other kept circling.
Higher and higher.
Until we weren’t sure if it was still there at all.
I don’t know where I am, but I know exactly where I am —
If you could only stop your heart beat for one heart beat.