NYC Told Me All Your Secrets
A poem
The way you walked through Washington Square Park
just to get lost in the crowd,
and threw a penny into the Bethesda Fountain,
in the hopes that maybe they made a wish about you, too.
It told me how you used to dance the night away
at clubs that have now turned into banks and fast food chains,
how you always sit at the same corner booth in your favorite diner,
how you wandered through the stacks of the public library
looking for words to sink your teeth into, ones that would inspire
you, and remind you of where you want to go and why
you continue to call the concrete jungle home.
It told me how you made out on a bench by the East River
and made love till the sun came up in the West Village,
and still, through tangled limbs and neon dreams,
managed to make loving yourself a priority through it all;
and the intimacy of it all takes my breath away, and so I tell the city
that the gentle way you treat your heart should never be a secret,
but always always, always something you shout from the rooftops.
