midtown manhattan

I wanted to get out of the small house built before my parents were alive, between mountain tops in the lush green valley.

I wanted to live somewhere different, where cellphone reception was real.

I wanted to compete in sweepstakes promoting lifetime supplies of something terrible. Sugar stamped with the words “No purchase necessary. Void in Puerto Rico”.

I wanted to be a big fish in a big pond.

I wanted to be seen.

To look up from my coffee at a corner café, catching the eye of a stranger who moved too slow to hide their recognition. Knowing where I was from, even though my house didn’t have a street address and packages couldn’t make their way to the doorstep half the time.

I got what I wanted. Sort of.

I went to the big city.

I lived in the brick building with the fire escape outside my window.

I went to the school with the fancy name you always see in the movies about small-town kids who move to the big city to go to the school with the fancy name.

I got the job in the metal tower.

Scraping the sky. Thousands of faces encased in glass boxes. Each window its own fishbowl.

I learned to walk at the pace of people I would never again walk next to, ignoring my pulse.

I lost the color brown.

Now I’m the color of weak English tea on a bad day, acne scars shining on my cheeks.

I wanted to go somewhere to feel more like myself.

Now I wonder if I’ll ever feel like I did when I sat underneath raindrops on a warm afternoon. The trees shaking.

Counting the days until I could go to the city with the tall buildings where my walk matched my heart beat.