“I’m in New York…again,” I would say, like I was exposing a covert war, breathing a secret to life. there was the whispered wish i could lie. say i was elsewhere. but i wasn’t. i would evaporate out of my home, away from my friends. and materialize with a cigarette and boundless expectations on a street corner in the city. and the city would free me like a sympathetic jailer and i’d escape down long avenues to him. and i would trace the scar on his cheek with my eyes,