I left the confines of NYC after living there for 32 some odd years. I had loved her and held her and was eventually left empty by her. She is the resplendent whore who is adorned with all the riches of the world but is riddled thru and thru with a petulant disease that infects all her true lovers.

How did I leave? I left on a plane with a friend, a cat, some clothes and a laptop. I left New York to live in a city I never set foot in on a coast I had never seen. The sun followed me east to west , setting over an ocean I was a stranger to.

How did I leave? I left alive. Barely.

I live in Portland Oregon now. I have not been back to New York in nearly 4 years. In all my life I have never been away from New York this long. I hope someday to take my wife and kids there to show them the city that raised me, educated me, then tried to kill me.