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            Eight months feels both long and incongruent, as if last month exists on equal ground as this past summer, and any time in between could be mixed and misplaced but still made sense of.  Driving in feels unremarkable, and then I see Westside Market. The spotlights on the fruit as stark as always. In that exact moment, I imagine my sister Lauren laughing, a picture which comes up unconjured and seemingly at random. I used to make fun of her for the fact that she has the word “Joy” tattooed on the back of her arm. But right then, seeing her face in memory I feel her spirit rising in me as something both biologic and deeply sacred.  This must be the place.

            As my cab drives down towards the Cathedral, the anxiety has given way fully to excitement. I’ve built up what this moment might look like for a long time. Maybe we will just do a quick side hug and I’ll carry my suitcase up the stairs while he takes the elevator that I am afraid of. Maybe he will meet me outside, I’ll drop my bags and he will just scoop me up and kiss me. Then reality comes down the hall as he does. He walks leisurely, and so do I. But then he hugs me long, longer I think than I’ve hugged anyone. It’s me who breaks away, right after he kisses me on the cheek.

            Throughout the night, I am torn between wanting to live out these heightened versions my memory and living honestly. So often during that summer I told myself that I would let myself feel whatever I felt and feel it hard. If I was going to be happy, I would let it my blood run slick with it like a high. If I was sad, I would let myself cry regardless of the appropriateness of the situation. I thought this made me real. But it really just made me unrealistic. As I walk up the staircase while he takes the elevator, I remember the signs on the wall that say “Fallout Shelter”. But there was nothing nuclear going on, whether energizing or explosive.

            I know that a part of me really wanted the attention he was giving me and still wanted more. But mostly I wanted to just go to sleep. I didn’t forget that that was my main reason for being back here. We slept in the same bed without sleeping together. In the morning he left and I did not cry, did not stop for a second. I did not look back at the cathedral as I walked down the street. When I went into the subway I didn’t wish this place away. Someday it may be my home. But not now. And not with him.

            When we walk through these streets it he who recognizes friends or knows which aisle to go to for what. He knows why the tourists stop to take pictures outside a certain diner. In that present, it feels like it belongs more to him, even though I am more excited to be there. It’s like wondering if a tourist town belongs to the small number of locals who are tired of it or the vacationers who only know the joys of summer there.

            These poems are an exploration of one summer, perfect only in all of its jagged fragmentation. They are memories of memories that I both own and share. But I can’t take the collective and put it here. I can only give you my sense of place, my sense of him, and my sense of self.