--LOVE HAS A NAME

Because it’s spitting rain at an awful angle, the wind spraying my window with froth and foam.
Because it’s sunny with gold glare blaring so bright that the light’s rays scald my skin my hair my lips the tips of my fingers.
Because I am surrounded by waves and water and raucous wind working against the water subversively yet openly where any person with an attention span can see it.
Because I am surrounded by nothing, nothing at all, not trees or books or carpet paint drywall wood stairs earth or even space.
Because I am thin and want to be thinner.
Because I have been trying to build some sort of definition in my chest in my brain in my psyche about what it means to be me what it means to have a purpose what that purpose might be and why it is in any way meaningful or worthwhile.
Because it sometimes hails hard out here and I love the rumble sound of it the billion marble particles dancing off the roof.
Because the evergreens wear the wind in their wide sleeves, roaring like a prehistoric symphony.
Because the MoMA exists and The Met and The Westside Tavern and cabs and SOHO.
Because there are small towns and middletowns and every kind of place where a person might sip coffee while seated on a bench in front of a picture window watching people pass by.
Because children sometimes come in threes or twos or not at all but there is just the thought of them running up and hugging my knees, looking glad and familiar.
Because toast can be buttered or dry or torn in hunks and dipped into pools of egg yolk or slathered with whatever condiment a person chooses.
Because art has a pulse and lungs and can throb in white green red slices of square screens even when no one’s watching.
Because no one has a map for this, no prescription, no app or Google Maps, no history lesson to learn from.
Because failure is an inevitable part of the truth and truth is always busted-up, tattered and well-worn if it’s really the real thing at all.
Because faith is belief without evidence and sometimes, often, hope is all we have.
Because there’s no going back.