August 31, 2006

How many love letters can I write you, and never tire? How many days can I walk these streets and beam in gratitude over a dirty subway platform or a silent, grey building? Twelve years I’ve belonged to you and you only; twelve years I’ve fought my every demon if only to not lose my place in your arms, knowing it was the only chance I had to become the person I before had only dreamed I could be. I learned my name only because you whispered it to me, night after night in your mad soundscape I heard it, like no one had ever said it before, like I hadn’t existed before you knew me. I left you, time and time again I packed my bags and you remained, welcomed me back when I stood there at the airport, disheveled and breathing on the train like my lungs hadn’t worked the whole time I was away. 

My memory reels in stories, they are too many now to tell but I remember every one. Every street corner I’ve seen still holds the moment like a Polaroid in our album, the laughs and the tears all the same, every molecule of what makes me human was grown on your canvas and I don’t regret a thing. I stood in a foreign land one year and said I suppose the trouble is I wish you would be the home I carried with me always regardless the land under my feet, and I know I meant someone else then, New York, but I don’t anymore. You have grown around me like vines in the jungle, you have fastened your grit like dirt under my fingernails of which I’ll never be washed clean, I can go anywhere now, New York, because while I am not, without you, I also am not without you and there’s a difference there that cannot be overstated. I do not fear my homelessness, anymore, I do not fear anything. You loved my broken pieces until they were whole, let your magic wash over me, and now I am invincible. 

I can never repay what I owe you, but I can spend every day earning what you give me.

I can write you love letters 

until 

the very last word 

leaves my lips.