1. January Half-Light
Moonlight, shadow-ridden, dreamland;
perched beneath the window,
attuned to the silence of snowfall
that moves weightlessly
through the sky.

2. Spring Fog
Dewy grass, new leaves, morning;
breathing deep in the field
after an early run,
the ground wet with leftover night
will soon dry in the gentle noon.

3. July, Shadowless
Loud music, bright lights, festival;
feet planted in dust as
the stage rises above,
adorned in flowers to feel as
beautiful as the intoxication
of loud music outdoors in
late afternoon.

4. Remembering Fall
Crunching, thoughtful, moonrise;
someone steps in from
forgotten cold to stamp out their boots
before kissing her goodnight.

Six wheels turn beneath the driver and I
with enough power to kill us both.
Five silver poles run
from floor to ceiling, supporting
only one rider on an empty bus.
Four seats against the wall
are folded up for lack of use,
flattened against the back of the bus.
Three more stops until I’m home
and I put my headphones on
to cancel out the quiet.
Seconds pass as the driver
waits just long enough for
someone new to jump on.

By the time we’ve reached my stop,
I leave the bus but wait on the concrete
too long; I watch it flash past me,

one face pressed to the glass.

I used to think that I belonged here,
in this built up world,
tall as the skyscrapers and just as strong.

So when Times Square feels lonelier
than perching atop the Highline,
looking out across empty train cars
and the swollen river;

when the night turns,
all of the stars winking in windows;
as this monument of a city,
rooted in subway tracks,
releases into the sky;

I feel the sound of the street,
the rush underground,
the black night,
lightless against the outline
of New Jersey,

and think, still, I do.

Sometimes and after I would sit beneath one of my mother’s paintings
where she’d left it to dry, oil outlines of my brother
or my father against warm-colored backgrounds.

She would leave her bottle of red wine uncorked by the window,
as if for me, her lipstains pressed in a perfect pattern around the opening;
everything she touched was art.

I craved it; the art, and the womanhood that settled in the bottom of a bottle.
I’d get wine-drunk just to know the taste of growing old,
the bitter red liquid in my mouth staining my own untouched lips.

The longer I sat and watched a painting dry, the more the mistakes stuck out;
the uneven blobs of cheap oil colors made me want to smooth down
my father’s crooked smile, soften my brother’s hair.

Or shut my eyes so my mother’s painting was empty and it was gone.
I’d feel then the naked darkness of peering into eyelids
where once a canvas had been.

I would have sat by that window,
the emptying bottle between my knees,
all day and night if it meant she would have painted me.