The First Report Of a Time Travel | Chronicles Of The Young Immigrant Women

nalu romano

I was in the car with a friend (who I want to kiss) talking about what’s left to write about New York. Not that there will be an end: if there’s a city in which good stories are living in every single corner or just across the street, this is the one. The car was loaded with my moving to what will be home number six. I had to stop writing to count how many apartments I clogged the bathtub with my forever-weak hair. I can’t believe it. I’ve been here for five years, how the hell did I manage to move so many times? It was when we stopped at Freedom st -how cheesy poetic this is- that I started to think about my old addresses and its street’s names. Two different Lexington Avenues. The greek 38th street in Queens. Three different neighborhoods in Brooklyn. Train number 6, the famous green line. The Astoria bound. The if-you-sleep-you’ll-end-up-at-the-beach blue line. Jay-Z’s line. M train only for delayed days. The next-year-is-going-to-close-but-not-really L train, which was where I wrote most of the poems from my first book. I got a liberty letter in a place three blocks from Central Park. Confronted what it means to be an adult inside the only apartment I’ve lived in with a balcony. Felt lucky. Moved in with friends I’ll never speak with ever again. Felt prayerless yet hopeful. Then I said so many goodbyes in Bogart Street. Met love by Flushing Avenue, moved with her to a funky street in front of a secret party-place we never got invited to. Painted walls with never-picked-before colors with the help of love. Didn’t write any memories there. All of a sudden, within a blink of an eye, there was me waiting for the rain to fall, on my way to eight minutes from McCarren park and exactly fifteen minutes from my wedding venue. Love and I had a dream in common of living around there, but just one of us is accomplishing it. Now I don’t even know how many streets are in between our letter codes. Here I am writing from apartment number six. Hello! Today when I was choosing the right soundtrack to open the very few boxes with what’s left of me, I noticed I created a tradition unintentionally: I have a playlist with the name of every street I've lived in. With the songs I used to hear on my ways home and on my beds starring the ceilings and exploding kitchens and receiving awards in the showers and interlacing my body in people’s bodies and others “and.” Which means I can visit my rooms anytime. Which means I made all of my homes eternal. Which means I somewhat invented my personal time machine. Which hurts but feels so good. Pretending now is the only way through. Which means.