walking through valleys

I pulled my coat around me tighter last night, hurrying along eight blocks of breezy, dark Brooklyn. Men gather in clusters outside of closed door fronts, eyeing the streets, watching passersby like me. Busses and cars whiz by on the street, mothers hurry children inside of the grocery. I slide into the bike shop ten minutes before they close, run my hand over the frame of my bike, the same one I used in Providence a year ago. An hour later, she’s all decked out and updated, I pinch a helmet under my chin and roll onto the street.

I’ve been learning patience lately. Getting settled in a new space and learning to be still brings so many anxieties and doubts to the surface. There are books to unpack, clothes to sort, blankets to buy before it becomes real winter. I want everything to get done now. But I’m realizing that isn’t how life works.Patience is the only way you make it through life in the middle. Patience is what makes faithfulness possible. So I take deep breaths in and make to do lists that more often than not, begin with “get coffee.” Sure, I’m already thinking about the summer, about internships and jobs, about money for next semester. I’m already thinking about graduating and what I’ll do next. I’m thinking about classes I’d like to teach one day. But for now, I’m steering my bike down a crisp Brooklyn street, just trying to make it home and make dinner.

life in the middle

The heaters came on in the apartment today. I slipped out of bed and into Friday basics: black pants, denim shirt, massive scarf. It’s almost time for boots and gloves. I watch passersby drift past the window, sipping at a tall cup of coffee, reading messages from my brother. He wants to know if I’m falling in love any time soon. I tell him it’s hard here in the city.

So much is hard here in the city. Life rushes by like an express train with hardly any margin. I move in one long river-like rush from work to school to sleep. I have a place to call home now. I am doing things like shopping for curtains and blankets and putting pasta into mason jars because it looks prettier that way. I’ve unpacked most things, but home is hard to come by. My soul is staring at herself in the mirror, wearing a jacket that’s a little too big, her mouth twisted in suspicion, not quite sure if this is the right look.

sometimes, poems

this is the sound of beginning again.

dull and nervous.

itching in the middle of my shoulder blades.

that soft spot that never gets a spot or wrinkle,

unlike my face, which breaks out like a bird from a cage

because of the weight of living.

this is the sound of me tossing in the middle of the night,

of me flailing myself from an unruly bed,

of me scraping my sleepy body across pavement

whispering thanks and amen as I lean

into two trains

up five flights of stairs

into a classroom

this is the sound of coming back again.