walk in the park. go to the movie theatre. sit and read in the crisp april wind, mumbling woolf’s words to the breeze. write a poem. write a love letter that is really a poem, because all love letters are poems in a way. i love you is one of the most tender poems of them all and it is second only to your name. hug my best friend tight enough to start swaying like the willow trees responding to the morning. copy my physics notes over and stammer through the answers because isn’t it nice not to understand something isn’t it nice to have to try isn’t it nice to have ninety glowing at your from the dim dim screen of the teacher’s old computer. replace my tissue box where it belongs—nowhere near me, beside the window, which can be open once it won’t harm my lungs. empty the garbage bin and clean everything that’s on the outside and the inside and the outside again. put away my laundry. wear something that isn’t shapeless pyjamas. get out of bed. get out of bed without wanting to crawl back in. get out of bed and prefer the waking world to the dreams i had. i love you is a poem, and a prayer, and a passing phrase, and a promise i am still working to decipher. run down the hill in the morning without worrying that my feet will slide on the ice. there is nothing to fear now. spring is wresting control of the city away from the frost it’s been buried under. like a gopher of some kind i am poking my head above the surface. celebrate on wednesday with my feet planted in a subway station. walk to the station without the threat of illness planted in my chest, unafraid and somehow longing to arrive more than i long to leave. cry without the aid of a hacking cough or an overreaction or anything but the quiet sadness that some days are known to take on. buy new cough drops—all the ones we own i went through and they’ve just taken on the taste of illness to me and once i am well again i will not want to think about it. prop my head up on my desk in math and get out of school too soon and carry my coat all the way home. sit on the train with my bag on the seat next to me and watch construction stir to life out the window. romanticize my life which is really coming and going and coming back again. i love you not like a bullet left in its chamber but like an admission from the chamber of the heart. love, love, love, i would live for it. i would live for you. walk into the guidance office and whisper how do i get to london walk into the library and ask how do i get to london walk up to my parents and say i’m going to london walk to the edge of the suburbs and scream i’m going to london. so it is so it will be so i am not done chasing the dream. order coffee and drink it in the library and laugh until my chest goes dry. get on a plane in the incandescent fearless sky and promise to come back, and mean it until my feet hit the ground in london, and will i ever come back after that? only time will tell only there is time until i am well again. rilke wrote no feeling is final and no location is permanent and the sole reliance of human life must be on the changing of seasons and the turning of the tides and the buttoned noses of our dogs snuffling up to our doors when they suspect us of concealing treats. okay so maybe rilke didn’t write all that but if he lived today and if he met my dog he might’ve. carry my dog in my arms like a small child. kiss a boy somewhere that isn’t a subway station because while god might live in a subway station there’s no law that says we have to. cross the city back and forth just for easter because i’m orthodox we’re orthodox and birds of a feather flock together. complete ‘birds of a feather flock together’ with ‘until the cat comes’ and laugh without any of it turning into a cough, or a nightmare, or a ticking bomb in my gut. i love you and nine letters are so insufficient for the enormity of it but give us a second face to face and i will make up for it. i can make up for anything i can make up for the world just give me a second to get out of this bed and prove it to you. when i am well again there will be nothing i cannot prove.
author’s note: this piece is a play on what it means to be well, concerning both the physical state of having come down with a very bad cold and mental illness. i hope you are healthy and well, and if you aren’t i hope that your healing is coming soon. if there is one more thing i want to do when i am well again it’s come and wish you the best.