The oppressive afternoon collapses, one loud smack of thunder clearing the smoke fiiled air, the reminder of raging fires and how those who hate your city will never understand the things you’ve seen. The summer evening is cool, endearing. We sit in the bookshop café in the sidewalk seating, New York City transformed by crisis and opportunity. It’s hard to understand the changes while they’re happening.
We never sat in the street before.
A story unfolds at my fingertips, all youthful infatuation and poetic haze. You wonder if memory fails you, but the words, when you read them, ring true. Fifteen years ago you came to this city with stars in your eyes and the truth is they never went out. The truth is you’ve been making your wishes on them ever since and if someone gave you the choice you wouldn’t change a thing.
I know the days are hard, sometimes, are impossible to endure and the life seems a punishment for crimes you did not commit, but here’s the thing. You wake up in the morning to the sound of a heart on fire, you write your words on a canvas that never hurt you, only ever loved and burned and vibrated around you. The truth is you made a deal with the devil years ago and when you really stop to count your pennies, you have not regretted it once.
There was somewhere else I thought perhaps I should be, someone else I thought perhaps I could love, but I was only ever kidding myself. I have loved you since the day we first met, have loved you for 15 years, am blissfully ruined for anyone else.
Will hold this heart on fire
until I am but ash
on your streets.
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