In New York I was haunted by your ghost. I wanted to be haunted by your ghost since I can remember, but it didn’t happen until I got to New York. You probably don’t remember by now, the way we used to talk about how we would be dancing down sixth avenue, the Avenue of the Americas, looking for the same things that all the Irish children look for. JFK was once here, and Shane MacGowan was asked to leave here, and there are a thousand stories about a thousand souls that we will never meet, but they live somewhere in our blood. There’s something about the thing that runs through our veins that makes us refugees wherever we go. It happens to someone else every day.
We never did make it to a luxury hotel in New York City, but the dream’s still the same. We never got to understand each other the way we’d planned to, and sometimes, on rainy afternoons like this one, I don’t think that matter so much anymore either. Those things we imagined once are like children, who become their own people once they leave our arms, and sometimes they come back. I’m not leaving here until I know a few more things, some of the secrets I came here to know, but when I leave, you can bet it will be for good.
This morning I was walking along the Brooklyn Bridge. I bought you flowers for your birthday, the irises that you always liked. I also bought some fruit, the kinds of oranges you can only find here, and your favorite perfume. Somewhere along the way, I found a moment when there were no people in sight, and made a small offering, in the way that I was taught by my grandmother. She told me how to become haunted by your ghost, even when there was no trace of you in sight.
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