cross tongues over dinner

a much needed escape from the dark cloud generated by others that persisted over the turkey on the table yielded small clues to my state of mind...

dinner with a friend on an eerily quiet street in a city that for the most part is eerily quiet.

Me: " I found out that the rabbi who helped my grandfather just died in 2001 and he and his family lived in Brooklyn. I don't know if his wife is still alive but I thought about reaching out if I could."

Friend: " That's amazing!"

Me: "I don't think the synagogue he went to is here anymore. It says it is now a conservative congregation in Virginia, back then it was located on... on the Upper East Side...er, I mean the northeast."

Friend starts laughing and observes amusingly that I am no longer apart of this city.

" How did you get here?" she asks as we begin to walk.

Me: " I took the subway."

Friend laughs again, " you took the subway from New York to here?"

" I meant the train. I guess you can see where my head is right now."

We walk down a quiet street lamplight illuminating small pieces of it. I don't remember things being this way but then again I was never allowed to walk out at night when I use to live here.

When we reach the main artery of the city, I look south towards the yellowish glow of the clock in city hall and recall a dream I had recently. I was standing in the middle of a traffic divider and the whole street was plunged in darkness except for that yellow clock. I couldn't run as I was wearing heels.

Part of me wanted to go into all those decrepit structures that line each side of that artery for blocks on end, details from an era long gone, and the other part wanted to run towards that clock. Cause on the other side of it was the train that would take me to the city that was my home.