Resonance

The Bowery is sunshine and smiles, bright yellow daffodils beaming up at you as you pass, but you are busy beaming up at the sun in return, busy walking your beloved Manhattan streets with your eyes closed because they have never steered you wrong before, you've never been lost a day since you landed on this island, it's only been rain clouds in your vision, they confused you sometimes, but you were always grounded in your palace in the sky of New York. 

The technician pronounces your name right, says all you have to do is lie still and enjoy the break, and you nearly fall asleep in the noisy tunnel, wonder if there's a future in which we are free again. The Tuesday bartender is not the same as your Monday bartender, you do not know how to explain how your roots have seeped into that corner table and don't know how to leave. 

The truth is, New York, I don't know how to leave you. I don't know how to be torn from you again, to build a life in a world that isn't yours. He calls you a fascist for staying but he doesn't understand. This bar saw you through the end of the earth already, these streets carried you past your own destruction, this grid gave you love the kind you never thought could be for you. This country gave me a person I never dared believe I could be, 

what disrespect would it be
to turn my back on it
now?