Elegy for the French Wallet

You cannot consider yourself a New Yorker
unless you have traveled the Seventh Avenue subway,
unless you know what it’s like to stand so close to others
you can hear people popping gum inside their mouths,
unless you know how to grab the straps
without losing your balance, without breathing,
until the next stop.

You cannot consider yourself a New Yorker
unless you have visited the Met on a Sunday afternoon
to admire the collection of Egyptian art,
the reconstructed Temple of Dendur
the tomb of the female pharaoh Hapshetshup:
she wore a false beard to assert her authority.
You were scared to look directly
into that slim opening in the stone façade
to view the sarcophagus holding the queen’s body,
because she might not be dead: she might be alive
eating the food they packed for her,
in case she got hungry, ever.

You know you are a New Yorker when you lose
something personal, something valuable,
on the subway by mistake, or maybe it was stolen,
you were never quite sure whether
it was your fault, the time you lost your wallet,
the one your mother bought you
on her spring trip to Paris, after her second surgery.
The one she picked out for you because
of the vermillion leather exterior, because
you exclaimed RED as your favorite color at age three.

You didn’t discover the wallet was gone until
you reached for your keys, until
you were greeted by Frank the balding doorman,
who repeated at every opportunity, I knew you
when you were just a bit of a thing, and now
here you are, wearing stockings and heels.
You told him what happened,
what you thought happened,
he tried to console, but you already knew:
you would never find another French leather wallet,
so beautiful, so vermillion.

From Blood Lines, Kelsay Books, forthcoming 2022