Whole weeks are going by.
We eat eggs every morning now
with every window thrown open. 

I would like to think I had prepared for this—
by going around like Christopher McCandless,
saying, “I have had a good life and I am happy,”
trying to savor the monotony and routine.
God can take me home now if he wants to!
(Just save my sangria.)

I would also ask that he spare my family—especially my father.
Actually, don’t take anyone,
even the worst of us!
This is no time for moral relativism
and it’s a great & terrible time to quit smoking.
What difference does it make?

When we met the nurse on the roof and she was wearing a flower crown and said,
“Do you want a cigarette? I promise they are corona-free.”
And when we asked her about the hospital she said,
“We will all have PTSD after this.”

I told her my sister was a nurse in Michigan,
and when I brought up my parents she assumed they live there too.
This is always happening.
(The assumption… and me bringing up my family.)

I didn’t tell her we are planning on leaving too,
and I won’t get to say goodbye.

You should know I had grand plans to invite you
to get high and sit under the blue whale at the Natural History Museum
and play cribbage or something. 

I was also going to get just drunk enough
To tell all my friends that I am in love with them
even more than New York!
(Yes)… but also because I met them here. 

To think I was crying on the subway in February
just thinking of that melancholy party
where I would mourn my metropolitan mortality.

I assumed that would be the hardest part of this season.
How embarrassing.

Caroline (Higgins) Nyczak

Caroline (Higgins) Nyczak (’11) lives in Brooklyn, New York, where she spends the vast majority of her time teaching English Language Arts. You may also find her at barre exercise classes or playing (and losing) at bar trivia. She continues to be inspired by the energy and diversity of New York City and the beauty of that certain slant of light.