This Is About A Place

by Maddie DePuy

This is about falling in love with a place. This is about the way that sidewalks can carry your sorrow. About the way that the cafe on the corner serves you life lessons on a dish with your espresso. About the way a piece of sky from your apartment window is some sort of perfect kiss. This is about orange light in Riverside Park and the way twilight takes you in its fold as you walk from the train. When you fall in love with New York City it is the kind of romance that happens slowly, and all at once. New York wants you, and it doesn’t, and it holds you, and then it doesn’t. And just when you want to be held the most, it comes again with its crystal midnight and dawn-over-the-hudson and jazz on leaves in the crisp of your youth. The poetic simplicity of your grocery run and the ordinary wonder of your bodega. The art of waking up into a place that never fell asleep. The erotic graze of the MET, the seduction of the Guggenheim. The steady, unrelenting commitment of the rain to never stay too long and the snow to fall just when you hope it will. The enchantment in the everyday sifting of moments that make you wonder, was that just for me? Is it all, in some impossible way, just for me?