can my body hold this, I ask, and the answer is clear: yes, it wants to. a series of closures cascading against each other, even if the next gesture is the flip of a page. the opening of a new page is a closing of another. a goodbye, said with sincere sadness and tenderness.

I feel in me my galaxies, stars being born, stars dying, waves a-crashing. eddies and ebbs and flows, diluvial flows, trickles, oxbow lakes forming. are these seismic shifts? or water doing what it does? is this a dam, man-made, or is this just part of the river breaking into the sea?

inside there's a cascade of emotions roiling. most of it I hold, all of it I hold together, in the same frame, as 'beauty'. this too is beautiful. in every summer is a portal. I am in mumbai, I am in tel aviv, I am in ramallah, I am in beijing, I am in ulaanbataar, I am on a train going, going, going. this is that trip.

--

I do not know yet if I can hold what I feel. in its place a placeholder, a holding of a place. a goodbye to a series of beautiful memories, these days of early summer in new york city, june twenty twenty three.