THIS IS US
What We Choose and What We Give Up
A New York City love poem
I expected to come back to New York and feel like I felt at the beginning, when I got my first look at the city. Riding a train south from Rhode Island, I looked up, and there was Manhattan, the silver stilettos of the skyline regal in the orange sunset, an intricate Cubist brooch on the breast of the earth. The buzz of the city was intoxicating and dense — squeezed into place by the corseting rivers — and I felt as if my body had just been plunged into a massive, living outlet. I felt, for the first time in my life, an umbilical sense of belonging to a place; we were attached, I was of it, it was making me.
That first New York City week, more than twenty years ago, I stayed with a friend on Park and 91st, and I still vividly remember: ancient, skinny-aisled grocery stores with leaning shelves of dusty cans, the Wetlands, my first taste of Tasti D-lite frozen yogurt, the autumnal romance of Bow Bridge, the eerie insulation of Upper East Side apartments, the motionless heat of subway stations, doormen in their thick uniforms, the crush of Prince Street, the cube at Astor Place and the diner that never closed, Midtown fashion editors with their heels and slouchy backs, the clip and cadence of New Yorkers conversing, the swirling backseat universe of taxi cabs at three AM. I…
