The Leanover.

It’s amazing how quickly things cannot be yours: money, lovers, and parts of the city. There are blocks that seem as foreign now as when I was 18. Sometimes, I like to go back and walk around and pretend I am a citizen of the neighborhood. But being there leaves me without the sense of belonging and nostalgia that I anticipated, and rather, with a sense of guilt for intruding on the lived spaces of strangers; a sense of weariness as an outsider; a sense of foreignness and unfamiliarity, as if each day gone by is worth a year in time. There is no home there.