“I learned to feel nostalgia for my own youth while I was living it.”
-Edmund White, The Beautiful Room is Empty
There are windows in buildings along Central Park, buildings seen in photographs, towers rising above the green trees, windows you wanted to peer from someday. Don’t you know, nobody actually lives there, nobody you’d ever know.
You read a book but when you arrive the city’s not that city.
You walk streets at night and you’ll never forget.
He pushes you up against a wall, white teeth and rum, you’re not from here, are you?
A woman’s voice from his bedroom stereo; blue notes in the basement, she’s rejoicing and he begs for another chance, and when you leave you’ll find that song and replay it as though you could go back (and I’ll never forget…)
Rain in another city, sweet boy don’t you know, each step forward narrows your life.