n which I bid goodbye to, among other things, New York

Goodbye New York. We had a good run.

Goodbye Ada and Neal. Goodbye Stephanie. Goodbye Lisa and Craig and the Tozzi family. Goodbye Bryan and Jolene. I slept on your couch, I stole your sleep, I drank your wine, I ashed on your stoop.

Goodbye hot fresh bagels. Goodbye Italian ice and tremendous sushi and 75-cent hotdogs. Goodbye sloppy floppy pizza. You were so much yum.

Goodbye street cleanings. Goodbye $150 car towings. Goodbye taxi cabs and metro cards and crosstown buses, which I never understood. Goodbye street performers and subway musicians and David Blaine, who must have used his urban magic to disappear.

Goodbye street graffiti. You made me laugh. "Money ... over ... bitchez." That was a nice discovery on the Upper West Side. Or at that bar Siberia, the one without a sign outside, the one that used to be underneath Port Authority, where the wall read, "We were all God and we didn't know it." Notes passed to anyone who wants them, secrets scribbled on a wall. I'll take that over billboards and subway posters anyday.

Goodbye trash. There's so much of you there -- spilled on the curb, mashed into the cement, tangled in the trees. I get worried about you. Where do you go? What happens to you? You are the saddest part of New York, trash. You keep piling and piling. What is it? I don't know what you're trying to say.

Goodbye New York parties. The dancing, the cute boys, the promise, the damage. Everything to live up, to live down.

Goodbye New York. I cried in your subways and I kissed in your streets. I'm exhausted, I'm depleted, I'm spent. Eight million people want their hands on you. And so sometimes I figure let them have you, I can't do this, it's not worth it, fuck the whole thing. But then sometimes I think you and I have a thing. I left today stringing promises to return. I'll come back this spring, back next fall. Do I mean this? I do now. But I'm tired. My eyes are sore. Ulcers inside my lips. All right, enough of this nonsense. I'll see you when I see ya, huh?

Write soon.

written in Rumbley, Maryland and posted in Asheville, North Carolina