sometimes you have to lie to tell the truth

I am moving.

I never really owned any traditional luggage: matching bags with wheels and retractable handles. It’s always been backpacks and garbage bags.

Perhaps I will just gather up enough books to keep me occupied until I can replace them, a toothbrush, my notebook, black ink extra fine pilot pen, an extra change of clothes and a map.

Just me and my bike and an open rode where schedules and student loan hauntings are past tense.

I will collect community at each state line. Queers who look beyond my spotty gender. Poets who want to write with me. Strangers who will drink a pint of beer beside me and reveal the unabridged version of their lives thus far.

There is no rent on the open rode. Just highway signs and fields of grass where I can carefully lay my bike (Heleanore Herman II) and sleep beneath the aroma of stars.

The complication of love and its demands and my inability to commit will be dust. Thoughts will move from fragment into complex sentences due to lack of interruption and complete awareness of unplugged surroundings.

No cellular phone.

No internet.

No television programs.

No social media outbursts.

Just air…the wild beasts hidden in trees…and the ones napping on porches.

* * *

I may miss New York, and the 8 million people clustered inside of it.

I may miss my Saturday morning Farmer’s market at Grand Army Plaza, where I purchase dinosaur kale, carrots, beets, tomatoes, peaches, apples, cabbage, yams and a morning treat of blueberry or strawberry rhubarb muffin. I may miss that patch of shade I tend to lay in where I rest my bundle of New York Times. I may miss the nap I often spontaneously take after the sun lures me to sleep.

I may miss the New York Times and my weekend subscription.

I may miss all those poetry readings and the brilliant minds I’ve met off stages, gathering at various cafes, theatres, bars.

I may miss this home in Crown Heights where I have memorized my bike routes, the pattern of scents wafting, the pigeons with barbecue sauce dripping from beaks.

I may miss the sunrise here.

* * *

Sometimes, you have to lie to tell the truth.

I am afraid to remain because what if I really can’t make it.

What if there is no job for me.

What if (my) community is just a shadow blurred from lack of commitment.

What if New York doesn’t even notice I’ve gone……………..