A Poem.

The city felt empty days ago

I push through every demographic

-- all clad in black.

New Yorkers trudge through the slush

like a swarm of flies

zig-zagging,

hurtling forward in

near-misses.

I smile at everyone

and no one

in particular.

Disguised in my dark pea coat,

I am a Monarch in fly's clothes.

I am glowing,

unnoticed

like a nightlight in an empty bedroom.

She is finally mine

and she will have me too

and it's the scariest kind of relief

to be mutually in love.

Yávos

Yávos.

Sunlight captured in a jar of honey

refractions crafting

drops of gold

perfectly browned toast,

Holla at that challah!

French toast

melts in your mouth

and takes your mind with it

for a minute.

Mango coladas take me back

to umbrella toothpicks,

ordering Shirley Temples with a wink

and a plain slice with

"extra cheese, please!"

This is childish sophistication

summed up in unexplained foodie quirks.

Initial contact.

Cream swirls in rich coffee

like waves of molten chocolate.

Decadence in color,

delight in sensation.

Strawberries at their peak in the summer sun

a berry-picking smorgasbord

for kids with juice-stained hands.

Milk moustaches,

grapefruit splatters,

peanut butter and jelly with the

crusts cut off

the middle slice of the banana bread

the center brownie

Striving for high living--

treat yourself to it.

I once flew down the street

I once flew down the street. I was on my way to preschool with my mom and my little brother and it was a warm but gray, calm but windy morning. We descended a steep hill down towards Riverside Park, when suddenly the wind picked up. This was no ordinary wind—I could feel it. It approached quietly but suddenly and before I knew it, a canopy of dark clouds loomed over us and violent gusts of wind ushered us down the street like bouncers in a nightclub. Plastic bags and candy wrappers danced and flurried over the sidewalk like a herd of urban tumbleweeds. I gripped my coat tightly inside of my pockets, keeping to myself while my brother held onto my mom’s hand. We slowly walked onward down the hill as the sky howled and grew angrier with each step.

I looked down at the sidewalk which was littered with blackened spots of spat-out chewing gum. There were so many of them there… I wondered which flavors and colors each of them had contained. But before I could begin to contemplate the mouths that had spit those spots out, I felt my body begin to lighten as if I was standing on my tip-toes. My elbows lifted up ever so slightly and I slowly inflated like a balloon preparing to float off, lighter than the sky. And that’s just what I did! A huge gust of wind came barreling down the hill and knocked straight into my back, picking me up from underneath and carrying me down with it towards the bottom of the hill.

Not knowing what else to do, I ran with the air, suspended in an involuntary motion for a few moments until I approached a thick black lamp post. I quickly dislodged my hands from my coat pockets and wrapped my arms around its stable metal body as the wind and I passed by. And I broke free of the wind and twirled around and around the lamp post as my momentum gradually slowed down, until I found myself sitting on the sidewalk with my arms and legs wrapped around it. I sat there for a minute as I waited for my mom and brother. They reached me after a bit and I got up and rejoined the school-bound march. And as we continued to make our way the rest of the way down the hill, I reached out my hand from my coat pocket and slipped it carefully into my mother’s.

Awake

Awake.

The moon is up there

shining right through into my room.

Too bright,

it's glow is the mother of all fluorescent lights.

It's ugly

a pale gray of desolation.

There is no life in it

for it is only aglow with the distant light of the sun.

This ghost will not leave me be.

I check the clock,

five in the morning.

Sirens sound in the streets below me

but they are no longer background noise.

These blares become piercing, alarming

as they should be.

How dulled have I become,

that I hear these alarms,

these announcements of death and despair,

and I can go back to sleep!

or continue to shower

or tune my attention back into the TV

So I lay awake

watching the ceiling grow brighter with the sunrise

The sirens pass into silence

and again I forget to hope

or even wonder

if everything will be okay.

Alliterated

At attention

in amazement

after the attack

is alleviated

all is above, not around

the aforementioned antics.

Blonde buds

bloom barely

bit by bit

before brandishing

the brightest

beautiful blossoms.

Can I catch

catastrophes,

curb chaos,

crunch consequences

of the cold

with only calm considerations?

Don't detract from

their doom,

don't distract

the demons of the day

with a dismal defense

don't delay

daunting darker desires.

Tugging the Line

Balloons are tough to avoid heartbreak with.

You hold a bright orb of color

lighter than the air,

bouncing along above you on the end of a ribbon.

And its company is wonderful,

but there's that constant

tug on the line.

It yearns to float up

beyond your reach.

And you want to let it go,

although you will miss it dearly,

for freedom is all it wants.

You hold that freedom

dangling in your hand.

You let the ribbon slide up

out of your clenched palm.

And the moment it drifts up,

just out of your reach,

regret hits you like

a big yellow cheese bus.

It grows smaller and smaller

you suddenly feel responsible

for all of the trees

it nearly misses

and the gradually thinning atmosphere

pulling its insides

slowly out.

Freedom becomes the impending

pop!

You wonder if you should have

just held on...

Snowglobing

I'm sitting on my windowsill overlooking Central Park, watching the snow just fall and fall and fall. From twelve stories up, if I tilt my head at a slight upward angle, the trees disappear from view and all that's left is a solid white sky with little peppered dots of snowflakes drifting through it. I woke up in a snow globe this morning.

There is no slanted roof or gutters here to catch these little flakes and clump them together into one white mass. Instead, they float right up to my window and dance around. The wind conducts their movement as they fall fast and then rise up again suddenly, slowly suspended in midair. I sit, front row in a one person audience to this wintry ballet.

And it's funny that I've despised the snow for so long, refusing to see it in this light because of its chilling, bitter season. But every flake is really just a lonely raindrop that shivered as it fell from the clouds, becoming frozen in its liquid motion as it drifted down. Like everything else, they are bound by the cold.

And I'm frozen too, sitting by the window watching the stiff beauty of a dead season. But now I see through it; the snow will melt into water again, the trees will bud and paint the world in green again, and I will get up again and look at other things and move to other places. But for now I will drift with the snowflakes until I slowly thaw and melt back into motion.