Love Letter To A City Amber Daley

Amber Daley

I didn’t expect to fall in love with you I’m an Idaho girl raised on farm-grown beets and sugar snap peas But one year after we were introduced my memories of you are just as sweet

Oh golden, delicious, apple— Liza knew it well when she sang, “New York, New York”— to hold it on the tongue is to taste it twice

Sweet even to the core your gaping Grand Central greets with promising skies before even stepping outside and the channels of hollowed earth beneath your metropolis hold delicious stories waiting to be told

I long for the flavors I cannot photograph: The unsettling buzz of Chinatown with its fragrant, mysterious booths The steady rumble of the train beneath my feet The half breath of excitement caught in my chest upon glimpsing Manhattan’s skyline

I think the street performers feel it, too A homeless musician’s desperate fervor cooks up sweat upon his brow His toothless grin and soiled garments betray skill But he is better than me, each day martyring himself before strangers because he will taste no other city’s fruit

New York, New York I enjoy the quiet but thrilling zest of stepping into the crosswalk before the light turns green The cacophony of blaring taxi horns 96

doesn’t scare me nor does the dangerous gamble of walking alone through Central Park The delightful purr of the pedicab and the euphoric tang of paying far too much for a six block trek are moments that make my mouth water

I miss your palatable theaters and piquant art scene With each bite of your succulent fruit affective juices spray into my eye I sit in the cavernous, quiet Majestic and plead with the masked man in tears, alongside Christine Daa’e And when Picasso’s “two” women stare in the mirror then back at me It’s like drifting through a haze tasting a world so unlike my nine to five

See the cloud of thoughts rising above a sea of faces? It’s like a spray of juice filling the air with reality after taking too large a bite The sway of swollen briefcases are metronomes keeping steady beat to pedestrians’ toes iPods are shoved in students’ ears so they can ignore the bitterness of impending deadlines And businessmen chew on their morning meetings trying to swallow the city’s aftertaste

Though large, you are sweet and juicy Indeed, a chartreuse treasure you are to me I’m green with envy from a dozen states away wishing to be the cold-cheeked pink lady on the Circle Line, Red-skinned in a delicious Times Square winter or golden in the midst of a West Side sun

The Hudson River never looked this beautiful in postcards So I didn’t think I’d enjoy your flavor However, the distance between earth and sky stirs me as my head swims 86 stories above 5th Avenue If the Big Apple is an acquired taste I’d be happy to sample it every day

Pointing in the air, the copper lady reminds me I must soon return home And so as quickly as my delicious dream began the fruit is consumed until the next time my tongue hums a memorable tune that goes a little something like this: “New York, New York I want to wake up in that city That never sleeps…”