Stirring Point

My fingers run along the walls, remembering the various bumps and scars. Memories of past decades linger here like dust particles in the sunlight. I walk through their clouds, feeling nostalgia’s tingle as it lands on my skin. I’ve left this place, but it never left me.

Foreign lands and exotic faces kept calling. The world is a textbook with pages that must be turned. Those faces—they’re here adding stock to a human stew, but the broth is thin and watered down. I want the source: pure, raw and concentrated like a bullion cube. Waiting is a mistake; it assumes time is a promise and not a luxury. “I’ll go in a few years,” they say. “When things calm down at work.” Their words are laced with unease and tumble from their lips as if they’re trying to convince me of a lie. Why should I believe them? They don’t believe themselves.

Back to you. Your buildings jut into the sky like modern stalagmites, flickering and glowing as they bite into the blue. Your scent floods the air, and I wear it like a blanket over my shoulders. It’s pungent and smells of possibility and promise, but it masks the decay of your vital organs. We’ve dressed you up and torn you down, night after night, building you into a rich intoxicant in need of an iron lung. Your chest heaves with our pollution, and we clean up only what reaches our palettes. The rest? We let it fester. 

I wandered off in search of new horizons and left you under the bed like an old toy car. I’ve raced your streets, pushed a pace, and eventually flew off the track. Then a new toy came along, and like a spoiled child, I tossed you aside. You’re novel, and the moment I stood up, the next guy took my chair. The world will never ignore you, but I lost interest. How is that possible?

Those foreign lands: They get below the skin and threaten to pop if I don’t go. I twist the limits of my language, attempting to describe why things have to be this way. My tongue scours my mouth in search of lost words. It checks for consonants behind the molars and probes for vowels stuck between my teeth. Nothing doing. Why is a mystery of lesser importance. Doing is what matters, but I’d sure like a diagnosis. 

You’re never here with open arms, waiting to embrace your prodigal sons. If they come, they come. You cling only to the surroundings of where you were built. The schist, the Hudson, the East. You’re neutral, supercharged by the pace of your occupants, and wear any mask you’re given. You are the paper the poem is written on—the backdrop for all the world’s prose. 

I’m leaving you again today, and you won’t wave goodbye. Like an old locker, you’ll store memories for me in your brick and stone until the next time I return, but you’ll do so with indifference. You see me like the others: a taker, a grabber, a beak-wetter. You never wave to thieves. I get it. Not to worry, New York. I’ll show myself the door.