The delicate stems
tousled and tangled in storms
–still hold bleeding hearts.

Among new plantings
curious bees trail two soft
–butterflies dancing.

Just after taking off from Seattle’s Sea-Tac, Rainier presents herself wearing a cloud.

Holding above JFK, waiting for thunderstorms to blow over, a ship sails to rain.

Here are some Instagram posts documenting the city’s first blooms and that moment when you realize that it’s (finally!) time to store the winter coats. Keep jackets handy, though, until June. You never know.

Central Park at 72nd St.

Central Park West

Broadway UWS

For every kid standing in the middle of violence
holding the weight of what is not hers–
that cold night lived over and over,
remade in white hot fight, adrenaline and
fear, that lie of union, one moment of loneliness broken
open with brick and splinters, and he doesn’t
want to be there. He is too young for that. This is too
soon for that. She is used up for that. Moment.
For every kid standing in the middle
who really wants to be home safe, to be loved
safe, to be heard safe. I send that love. I imagine for
you a place where these nights can’t reach you.
Let the white people fight. For or against,
they sit removed and you know they know.
They can’t touch you. From seats of privilege.
They can’t touch you. I imagine for you that place.
Where you’re standing in the middle
of your own love. And you grow strong.
And you grow. Into the righteousness
of your own, true, chosen fight.

-Sharon Rousseau

*I sat down and wrote this during the Baltimore unrest and posted it immediately. It’s an unedited response my emotions around those events. 

In October when my brother and sister-in-law were visiting, we walked around the East Village, reminiscing. On St. Mark’s Place, as we talked about clothes we’d bought, gigs we’d worn them to—stages my brother had worn them on—Alice Cooper ambled by and only my husband noticed. My brother and I were lost, if only for a few minutes, in the past, vivid as the surrounding buildings. On Second Ave, I commented on Pomme Frites, remembering when it opened. Then I gabbed on about Love Saves The Day, a store which closed in 2008, and how we found so much cool stuff there back in the 90’s. Memory is a strange thing. That day in October, we were choosing to go back to something we had experienced differently (yet at the same point in time) and describe it—mostly rock n’ roll in the East Village. Today, I’m in the city and saddened by the loss on Second Ave. New York is hurting again. Our thoughts go out to the victims, to families suffering loss, to all of those affected. There are many stories of businesses helping the displaced, people pulling together, like New Yorkers always do. So many times, I’ve thought that NYC can be both the loneliest and most communal place in the same moment. Memory is indeed a strange thing—imprinting the past all over the present—and for many here, we’re experiencing it differently, again, together.

After the road trip
crossing back in abstract blur
–our neon and night.

While snow and ice continued to linger in NYC, I arrived in NC—after a very long drive—to this night rose. March travel has been a much-needed, if brief, reprieve from a difficult and relentless winter in the Northeast.