I watch – a somber darkening sky only February can lay claim to, beyond the new high-rises, faded forever rooftops of the city passed by as the El clacks ahead further north. I watch: people and their soft-soled shoes and bags, phones, dreamstate eyes looking at nothing as real as the opening and closing of train doors. I watch how much closer I am getting. The inconclusive judgments come down and fly off to circle high up the way hawks appear over a mountain. I do not speak with my eyes, pronounce with my gaze. My lungs trace the shapes and edge of my vision. Bodies tumble out of the train car, find ways towards other destinies, slouch down filthy stairs. There is still some light to this day however, and more motion to this journey. I watch: my flickering self face-framed in the window, flesh translucent, buildings bleeding through, looking past my faded body into the rain clouds. (2/13/20)
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The things that settle in lengths of solitude, sitting. The blank air of the day before you. The plants may have an idea of your gaze as you take your place behind windows. Sudden sky shifts, storm opaque to swaddled sunny blue. Momentum gets caught up halfway through morning, duty and the desire to drift, unaccounted for and unspoken to. Your exhales attempt to loosen the knots which find their way into thinking’s own logic. There must be an optimal standard of you which can withstand all the little fires of life. Which assumes all the power, and relinquishes herself to peace. (4/22/20)
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The higher self in me is watching. The light outside transforms under its eye. So many hours listening, being witness to this different kind of tethering. The reaching out we do without knowing hands are open to grasp from the other side, too. To feel more human, to revive the search for whatever door is to open. The entire day lengthens before me, but somehow it is still not enough time to encapsulate everything I would want to make use of a day for. Night runs out, the slow starting, slow burning flame still percolates, and my body soon bends into sleep. We redefine work; suddenly there is so much to do to take myself seriously, to begin the grueling work of reinventing my own spaces so that they become expansive, infinitely expressive. (4/25/20)
mabel lee 