a fragment of: Solitude in the Heart of Manhattan

I walk all day and forget that my depression, too, is what has exhausted me. The night arrives again to occupy the city, so the streets leave and become busy elsewhere. I come back to my bed and Chase is gone. The sheets are straightened and it looks as if we were never there, but I can feel us. A note sits where my head had been lying and it reads, “I don’t understand. You disappeared and I waited.” I do not care that he has gone. He was not the dream I came to the city for. He was not the skin, I dreamed of dreaming upon. I do not care that he has gone. I do not care. Liquid washes over my eyes and I cannot see where I am. I find my phone, place my ear to it and wait for a reassuring voice.

Llurenence answers, “Claudelean, my Chelsea girl.”

I am not living in Chelsea. I live in the East Village just behind the park.

“That sounds nice. Well, good night my Manhattan girl.”

No, the night has not been good. My dream is not what I imagined it would be.

“I want to go to sleep, Claudelean.”

Please, stay, speaking. I plead.

“It is hard to talk to you. I want to but do not believe I am able. Your leaving me has left me with exposed wounds. I am inoperable.”

I didn’t decide to leave you though. I didn’t plan to go away with the idea that if I returned I would not see you.

“I was not prepared for Manhattan to steal my love from me. I never thought I would have to compete with a city; a city that I haven’t ever even been to, but which took you from me.”

It is not how it seems, Llurence, believe me. You do not know how much I miss it all.

“What specifically?” he asks.

Well, for one, the sight that sets in Miami. Living in Manhattan, you forget what else exists—you forget what else is real. But being here now, I see what I have grown to miss: the Miami horizon where the sea and sky come to kiss. But that is just a metaphor for a time when the two touched and fell beneath each other once the night curtained the city.

“Come back to us then.”

I can’t. I dreamed I would stay.

“I don’t believe you,” he cried.

I want to go to sleep inside Manhattan. I want to wake and see frozen framed windows and watch snow fall from the sky.

“Wake up, Claudelean. This is all unreal.”

Manhattan is a dream, but not the dream I dreamed of having.