I Ruined New York

 Jessy Randall

I apologize. I’m the one who wrecked the feeling there, the alive, excited state of the streets, the way the museums embraced everyone who came in. What happened was, I was born, everyone liked me, I decided it was New York or nothing, arrived at eighteen, and then slowly over the next six years suburbanized first the entire upper west side, then midtown, and eventually even the village. Don’t worry, though. I got my comeuppance. Look at me now, in Colorado, driving this gray car with the booster seat in the back. I can’t even find it in the parking lot.

Jessy Randall's poems, comics, and other things have appeared in Poetry, McSweeney's, and The Best American Experimental Writing. Her most recent book is How to Tell If You Are Human: Diagram Poems (Pleiades, 2018). She is a librarian at Colorado College and her website is:  http://bit.ly/JessyRandall.