Together

Together we came to the edge of the city, walked a few of its blocks, carrying in our different ways the flame of life. We were learning to care for that flame – learning not to die. The city swirled around us, all four of its seasons seeming to happen at once, inside us. Its music happening, and we were – you especially – adding to it. In one of its little apartments you sang, and I sang too, after my fashion, our singing joining the city's ongoing euphony.

 

Much of my singing you couldn't hear. It happened while you were sleeping, while looking at you for a moment at peace, touching your hair. That’s the way of love: in the end, it’s a private affair.

 

Now, still at the city's edge, we part. I see you striding away, not looking back, the wind rain sun snow all happening around you, wind rain sun snow in your hair, and above me too, while I watch you go. Older, slower, it takes me time, is taking me a long time, to turn away, to walk with my flame deeper into the city, another long block, toward whatever awaits at its heart.

Tree and Spider

A few days after she left I ordered a tree planted in the barren space in front of my stoop. The city soon put there a "Greenspire" Little Leaf Linden, its tag said. For a while I watered it, but I soon saw that I didn't need to. It was doing fine.

Looking at it earlier tonight, I imagined 20 or 30 years from now, long after I’ve left this city, on my last legs, coming back to see the tree. And finding it like the other trees along 123rd as at home here as I once was. Giving shade to those who pass by it without noticing it. The days of its first New York City spring still held within its roots.

 

Later I came upstairs and leaning over the stove smoking, in a position all too familiar to me because consoling for the last four months, saw a spider, small, a pale yellow, descending by way of its filament, dropping in front of me. And I thought to kill it. But I wondered, What if it’s God? So I blew on it, and it fell onto the stove, seeming to glow against the stove’s blackness, and I watched while it made its way along the stove’s seam to its edge, where it descended again by its filament to the floor and disappeared.