MARCH
The trees are blooming. I’m glad I went out to see them. I plucked a blossom off a branch but I forgot about it in my bag and now it’s all crumpled. So it goes. I want to cherish this last spring in New York, but it’s hard to do that at the epicenter. The city feels normal, but I think it’s used to finding normal. It’s got restless bones and they’re used to shifting.
APRIL
Allah save me, I want to leave. Get me out of here. Most Gracious, Most Merciful, All Knowing, All Forgiving. Let me out. I want to leave my head. It doesn’t feel safe here anymore.
MAY
On the way back home I picked up chocolate and beer from Rite-Aid. The Empire State Building is lit up red, and pulses like a beating heart. It felt like watching New York City’s heart, still beating strong, still pumping its lifeblood. I stood and watched it for a while.
JUNE
Today I was waiting for water to boil on the stove, watching condensation gather on glass in rhythmic stochastic circles, and for one clarifying moment I felt so centered in my body. I felt the perfect balance of my weight on the soles of my feet, and the skew of gravity, and my vision felt bright and abstract, a moment of poetry. The small things have been leaving me breathless lately.
JULY
If there was movement in the heavens, now would be the time to measure it. Set up all your instruments: the veil between the worlds is thin, and the air is so still there are tidal waves, seismic upheavals, ripples in reality when you let out a breath.
AUGUST
We went to Dadabbu’s grave. And then further back to Nanabba’s. And then Choti Mani’s. Every time I visit that cemetery, I look at the space still left in that lot and wonder who else in my family will fill it next. Dadabbu helped set up that Muslim cemetery, back when the community was a fledgling thing and there wasn’t one. And now he’s buried there. That’s called planning for the future, I guess.
SEPTEMBER
What have I done since I wrote last? These are my last days. So much of this year was stolen. I have eaten good things with friends and walked across the island and discovered new things. I went to Taboonette and got shat on by a pigeon and listened to the New York Philharmonic play at the Astor Place cube and ate dumplings and sat on a swing on the East River and lay in the grass in Central Park and in the mud in Washington Square Park and bought coffee beans on Bleecker Street and made lamb shank stew and red curry and bought spices at Kalustyan’s and nasi lemak from Rasa. I have tried to live a great deal, as much as I possibly can.
OCTOBER
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