if i started writing the poems like Cat Cohen does
all id, all whim, no true nostalgia
i'd never get to this one.
this one, this eulogy, half elegy if i'm hopeful
i walk east manhattan
and know that i'm bound to go home
someday
wherever that is
but i know it's not here.
not here where the bike lanes can't make up
their mind on whether they're on the left
or the right side of the street,
some place where i'm never quite sure where i could sit
and rest outside.
even if the way the scones frame those limestone buildings
looks transcendent, i know
i guess i always knew,
how the moment i stopped admiring them like a tourist
the facade would come down in tufts, in crumbs, in chunks.
is this disenchantment?
is it disillusionment from everything else burrowing
into the crevices of my disenchantment with this city?
i really wanted to be wrong
that i was a girl meant for new york
that even though i never got to realize the dream
of being 25, thin, alive, and traipsing down 5th avenue
with a latte in one hand and a designer handbag in the other,
well i'd settle for something else,
even if it were strolling its eerily quiet sidewalks
holding a giant bowl of garlic bread
to a super bowl party at a three-story loft
isn't that what i wanted? some sweat-filled musky
apartment with cream walls and fogged-up windows
where i'd contribute my dues in the form of a bottle of wine?
i blink and i'm living it
the dream.
and i'm hollow.
and i've never been to chicago.
and i wonder if that man will ever find fulfillment.
i wonder what he is missing
and i look at myself and i ask myself what i am missing
i am missing everything, pieces of everything i suppose
i tell myself that not because it's not true
but because i don't really know the source of my
dissatisfaction. is it really just unattained ambition?
is it unfulfilled dreams of the new york that i built in my head?
is it lost youth? the sudden and harsh realization that i am old
and i'm not unhappy about it.
i walk with the rhythms of someone who's getting older
who cares about things that the young don't
i miss being 21. i miss being 20. i don't wish to be 20 again
but i guess i miss thinking that more life was ahead that was behind
and for once i wasn't wrong.
i suppose i wonder what it would be like
to meet him, to sit down in his apartment.
whether i'll meet the same sense of disappointment
that nothing matched the fantasy i'd built up in my head
i vowed to learn to forgive myself
but now i just pity it
when i look back at the years, what feels like lost years
that have amounted to now.
this living. this quasi living.
this facsimile of living. it really doesn't feel like living.
it feels like the most elaborate charade
and everyone including myself is in on it.
and by it, the scheme that i like new york
that i'm trying to like it more
that i don't keep wondering where is worth moving, living
what i'm worth,
whether or not i'll ever be pretty again.
especially in a city like this.
i watched half of hte superbowl and
i'm not thinking about forgiving myself
i'm thinking about whether i'm good enough
(for myself?). what am i trying to prove and to whom?
D had me all figured out and i'm now older than he was at the time.
and so now i wonder when i will make that trek to brooklyn.
pilgrimage to mecca
before i leave for the summer.
maybe i will leave for the summer.
ideally with a summer job in hand.
maybe i will leave and that is what i came for all along.
permission to do what i want to do and the prerogative
to change my mind.
tenminutethoughts 