Wherever you go the past always follows
and it weighs heavy on your shoulders
a geography of emotion tied up in history
far too personal to share except as poetry
Manhattan is made of your own memories
enough to trip over as you cross 6th Avenue
a hard landing in a pile of faded failures
new eyes notice how it all comes full circle
You were full of unearned confidence then
drunk on love and the newfound freedom
of reinvention that took you in all directions
from uptown to downtown and back again
The culmination of transformation occurred
at last but in deep isolation from the world
you emerged eighteen months later blinking
those new eyes a gateway to an old soul
Or perhaps it was the other way around
after all this time you're still not quite sure
how everything became so familiarly strange
let alone what you're going to do about it