By the time you get to the subway stop, the red tape swerves around the bannister. You will not be getting back to the island. Trip across Queens streets in silence, count minutes till alarm clocks and demands on your awareness. I only ever wanted to be free.
We sit at the other edge of the river, watch deep summer sun set behind Manhattan, I know this view from another life, the sting is only dull now, I turn it over in curiosity. Nothing bad doesn’t also bring something good with it, we say in my mother tongue, my native language I am a hundred poems in one, how much should we afford each other our shortcomings. I reach another subway stop, find another connection, feel the pressure of a midtown tunnel and long to reach Manhattan soil.
It was all built on garbage but at least it is ours.
Change trains in midtown, in the back of your mind something feels familiar. Doesn't the same go for anything these days, like you know you’ve gone through these motions before, know you’ve built smiles and exasperated hearts, know you’ve seen the New York night undulate underneath trembling fingertips, but it’s been so long and you don’t know if you trust it anymore.
New York, my darling how we longed for you, how we ached and waited and burned when there was nothing else to do but fear, how we stuck it out. My head races in poetry on quiet Long Island city streets, it cannot be helped, I no longer want to help it. There was a time I thought the answers lay in watching that sunset with another pair of eyes seeing the same but I know now, New York, the other pair of eyes is just my own, mirrored, is just the magic of coming back full circle for round two. I told you I’d risk these streets to memories, and the time has come to make good on my promises.
I empty my coffers for you, New York.
It isn’t much, but oh, what it aspires to
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