Summer in the City

All my friends say
that of course it's
going to get better
(better)
(better)

The heat breaks. Finally, for a minute, there is reprieve. The pain in my arm subsides, slightly, days pass and you breathe, it's like a haze is lifted from your eyes. We went to the beach and I stared at the horizon until I forgot my name, let the salt water wash over my teeth until they went numb, we rode home on the A train for an hour and I was tired in that delicious way that only the sea can make a person.

I walked down the Bowery today, little drops of rain falling hesitantly into the steaming air and the early evening sunlight waded across the brown brick buildings and water towers of what used to be a wasteland. The street smelled of warm city, dirty, crowded, impossibly alive and unequivocally New York; my heart swelled a hundred times and I smiled at strangers, I couldn't stop. As I crossed Houston, he sent a picture of late night twilight, open space and melancholic nature, and I recognized the feeling instantly.

It seems a lifetime ago, now, I stood in an apartment unpacking bowls and books I didn't want to unearth, knowing that each piece placed moored me further to a place I didn't want to be, a place that wasn't New York. Leaving the city tore a gash in my insides I didn't know if I could ever heal, I almost forget now what it was like. The mere shadow of the memory scares me out of ever wanting to leave it again. I know there are beautiful things elsewhere, I know I have been happy, I know there is a life for people out there.

But when that golden light hits the avenues, when I see endless miles of the city stacked up like Legos around me and the sounds of its steady pulse beat through me like nothing has ever been broken and I will never be lost, the scar in my gut smooths out, the horizon grows fuzzy and uninteresting. It's not that I'm scared of leaving.

It's that the only thing I ever wanted to do was stay.