The Year of No Mistakes
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The Year of No Mistakes - Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz
It
I
THESE UNITED STATES
We met in Providence, Rhode Island, our country’s
smallest state. Its motto is just one word: Hope.
At first, you lived in Chicago, where I’d visit and eat
breakfast out of a cast iron skillet every morning, and
I lived in New York City, where you’d eventually move
three weeks after the Towers were knocked down.
New York City was our base for eight years, where
the dotted lines of our travels originated and where
they ended: Austin, where our friends bribed us
with beer and queso; Charlotte, where the BBQ
was so good, we high-fived each other, our mouths
too full to form words; New Orleans, where our friends
married the day after you ate your first crawdaddy;
San Francisco, where we slept in a room with an iguana
and ate cheap burritos fat as puppies; Columbus, where
your brother lives; Florida, where your parents live; LA,
where we sat next to the hot tub our friends were in because
it never occurred to us to pack swimsuits in the winter.
In between it all, we lived in Astoria, Queens, sleeping on a bed
a friend of a friend was just going to throw out anyway,
commuting forty-five minutes on the subway each direction
just so that we’d have an excuse not to see anyone else
on the weekends. This is where we spent the earliest years
of us, where we built our first small home, crammed it
with all that laughter. When we finally left, our friends threw
us a party, and we smashed piñatas shaped like Death Stars.
Almost nine years earlier to the day, we rode through Canada
on a Greyhound bus. We saw an entire flock of shooting stars
through the scratched plexiglass windows, and made wishes.
We were so new back then.
We couldn’t see the mountains. We could only see
the darkness where they blocked out the sky.
MANHATTAN
It was actually Woody Allen’s New York City
that my boyfriend always wanted to live in,
and instead, I moved him into Queens.
I was as much Annie Hall as he was Alvy Singer,
which is to say not a lot, but maybe some,
maybe where it counts. The New York City
we lived in was not starkly black and white,
with a Gershwin score. We didn’t
walk into delis with a dachshund named Waffles
or quip with Bella Abzug in MoMA’s sculptural garden.
We never saw Truman Capote. Not even once.
Instead, we live in the present: a New York City
that even Woody Allen can’t afford to live in. Or
maybe Woody Allen’s New York City never existed.
It was the 70s version of streets paved with gold.
We fell for it. We fell for it every day:
skyline, lumpy as a nose, shiny as black-rimmed glasses;
the Yiddish we picked up through osmosis; character
actors at every turn: ditzy rockers, loud old women,
dapper old men, couples kissing hard on the sidewalk.
How can we leave it behind? And yet, we must.
Even Woody Allen knew sometimes you have
to leave her to create what you want to create,
on your terms. New York City has so many lovers,
but she marries no one. She strings us all along,
and my God, do we love her for it. How some days,
it feels like an old Woody Allen joke: Such terrible food.
Yes, and such small portions.
BROOKLYN
I don’t know you at all, but
your women are pregnant.
Your pitbulls are hella nice,
and your small dogs are hella
arrogant. Hey, French Bulldog,
nobody gives a shit about you.
Stop acting like you’re so
goddamn special just because
you are wearing