the Middle

(There's a silence in the country you never get used to. A slow steady breathing of grass and heartland, of the way we were and the way we'll never be anything else. My senses stagnate, I forget what it is to tingle in fireworks. One late summer evening I arrived in New York City, innocent and excited but somehow full of the knowledge that nothing would ever be the same now, how right I was.

I stay here, in this quiet countryside, I'll bide my time and do the work, but soon I must pack my words and return to the noisy avenues where my heart can rest; I've lost so much in this life, my love, but if it means I can come home to your steady embrace, I will want for nothing in the end. The notes amass, remind me what's waiting on the other side:

I also had a dim idea that if I walked the streets

of New York by myself at night something of the 

city's mystery and magnificence might rub off on

to me at last.)