the day on the wharf

The day on the wharf, that day I’ll not soon forget. I’ll not soon forget the day on the wharf and all of its simple beauty. Behind retrospect’s veil I can hardly see that moment at the intersection and our inability to assign a captain or cohesively decide on a direction for that matter. I only recall sunlight, sangria, the Hudson, the wharf, the vending counter, and a third party eating cupcakes at the table beside ours and eventually them giving one to Patrick. Moving toward the vending counter where I saw people buying buckets with fruit around the edge and scattered throughout the contents. Candice told me it was sangria and asked if I’d ever had it. There was a moment when I thought to myself, “that’s too much to spend on a pitcher I don’t care how good she says sangria is,” and I nearly turned back, nearly settled for a bucket of Heinekens…nearly. And something now tells me that all that day hinged, and had we not sangria our memories of that day would have slid quickly into that violent abyss, the one with the rotting sign posted a step outside of its descending northern wall, the sign reads- days forgotten (written in blood-colored ink).

It was grace that said “carpe fucking-diem”- shell out thirty dollars for sangria. It, grace, alone knew I’d need that taste to store that memory deep and long enough for a morning like today when I’d wake up fearing that hope is lost, like Father wouldn't take me back smelling like pig-shit and slop.

Pat and I sat back and threw questions like frisbees with limp wrists.
“How’s D.C.?” I’d asked.
“It’s good, how’s Florida?” he’d asked in return.
We obviously didn’t remember to hold them frisbees level and flick, we used too much arm, we tried to muscle it the way kids do when they’re just learning how to throw. And I wonder why even at twenty-five it felt like the right thing to do; like quality or longevity depended on anything but a gentle, level, motion of the wrist to the right, the release of a disk flatly held.

Thankfully our temporary brooklyn resident friends remembered what makes the earth stay in orbit. They knew to enfold one another, to be unrestrained about living well amidst the pain of prodigality. And we all walked on, down the wharf until pat and I took our loving friend's cues about sharing honestly, revealing what lay shivering beneath the surfaces of our frightened minds, letting all of it get bathed and slain in a blood-red sunset.