is hunched down against the rain. Hard cookies and pistachios
lean into the window. Tap on the glass and old women start baking:
hard cakes, hard loaves. This morning, I came to MacDougal Street
to buy a ring, and now I can’t seem to leave.
Thirty years ago, Patti, this is what l thought was home.
There is a picture of you on a train in 1967: a thin girl with
long hair on her way to see the Mahareshi. I was a thin girl
with long hair, on her way to buy hashish. I had on too much silver,
and I was wild and sick in those days, when you had all that
mod chic and rocker style. When you had those young eyes:
living on the edge of everyone else’s life, you probably
devised the best solution: Marry. Marry well.
I hear you live in the Apennines now, or travel constantly.
That’s what I learned, too, from my course in meditation,
though the goal was not peace but movement: this was
a bad city then, and you had to play it, you had to
just open the door and run. I’m not complaining, Patti:
I survived it, I ate it when I had to, liked it when they said to.
I killed it when there was nothing else to do.
But silver wears down. And even pretty girls get lonely;
even crazy girls want to stop. Because silver wears down
when it’s supposed to. Because I can still name all the dramas
I appeared in on the nights, the days that rolled away from me
between Renwick Street and the Chelsea Hotel.
And now I think that silver wears down when it decides to.
Last week saw a picture of you in an Italian airport:
scarves and sunglasses and yellow hair. I’m glad to see
you still have a destination. I’m glad the photographers still know
who you are. And me? I bought the ring, I made a call to say
that I was coming home. Me? I fell in love long past the time
I had expected to. I have a dog, a view of the city.
Thanks for asking, Patti. It’s a surprise, but I’m doing well.
by Eleanor Lerman
