memory is the rutter and forgetting is the oar, I am told

rowing forward in this city is its own game of synthesis

when any night I could

get on the subway to the place my mom ate just before she gave birth to me,

which is right down the street from the church where we scream at meetings, down the block from the chicken store named after my brother. we would bring the chicken home.

and go out to the building yard to play with the weeds

which are the same weeds, across town, that I gaze down on when I collapse on the hill, peel away from you to quake and cry.

Who should I take to reclaim that hill with me? I could take any past, any future. take comfort, take new hands to hold, new hill.

But that chicken store is a bank now: time passing in the city is not a neutral ground

relocation is a claiming naivete, a beautiful starting over that takes years to surmount.

from the privileged vantage point of slight-longevity I wonder if I feel this just a little bit more.

or who gets access to having their blinders off? and who is not ready? and how would I know?

the number of injustices I will never feel in this city

is a wave that crashes on this small bearing witness, eighteen and then three years.

but my brothers strumming those good agonizing songs on guitar together,

just like they did on the subway

will always make me think about

that safe feeling, to not question taking up space.

and the potential to feel an ease in public that is just apolitical.

as long as there is the option to go back there,

I will always want to go.