The Good Days
I want good days.
On good days I want.
I want to peel back the seams
of this cellophane life,
to smear the calluses
and ridges of my thumb
against its dark screen.
I want to mark out my own constellation
with such smudges, however faint—
I want days spent laughing
at all my fears.
(Those are the good days).
On good days
I run the bridges,
arching my own rhythm
alongside the clatter
and screech of the J/M/N/Q,
joyful. As a child
did you ever race raindrops,
or imagine a figure alongside
your parents’ car, running?
I am that figure, bounding beside
steel serpents. Sometimes
I can see myself atop their spines,
fearless. Together our eyes burn
like jeweled flame at dusk.
Do the commuters notice? I want
to be seen.
(On good days
the world is generously
fractal. There is always
more to observe.)
On good days
I inhale this city in deep:
the grease and smoke
of subway roots underfoot
and Halal carts above, cheery
wavebreakers against
the street corner crush. I eat up
the human rainforest,
biomass that squeezes out
briefcase, Prada, and tattoo like
feather and gills and spots. Are these
adaptations for love
or for existence?
Never mind that. But do
mind the ebike zipping by,
nimble and battered
and fragrant. Everyone must
evolve.
(On good days
feedback loops do not strangle
like a noose. There is always
more to do).
On good days
I hear a bird in Fort Greene,
some braggart with twelve voices—
and recall the strut and siren
of the grackle with less
grief. Do you remember
the way we’d worried
about our bedside tree, how
it curled up into itself after
the February freeze?
We needn’t have. Who knew
it would expand, lush and green,
until it could block out the light,
the morning that I moved
out? Now I want to learn
the names of ten thousand trees,
and know them each
by leaf. Even if the eye of the aspen
is all I know today, and the way
its leaves flare golden
before the season ends.
(On good days
I grow to fill the negative
space of you. There is always
more to become).
….
On good days
I hope, and pray, and know
that this is all there is, and that it is all
enough.
(These are the good days, aren’t they?)