The time I saw New York
I cried
I cried for all the things I could remember
in a thin burgundy slip on some empty set of stairs

It was two minutes before midnight
“A New Year”
Something I wanted so much to be true
but I hid my face and wept

When I saw
that all the young girls and old men
in fancy clothes down below
didn’t disappear
or move or change

Instead, danced in circles
mirroring the portraits of my shame

Spinning
around and around,
Stuck in their own involuntary pulls
of gravity