Splitting Life Between Two Cities

You never hated LA, you just never got a driver’s license.

You never hated NY, you just refused to buy a puffy coat.

You move to Los Angeles with a boy who couldn’t boil water who was too depressed to remember to eat.

You move back to New York and date a chef who has yet to cook for you.

You sit in the dirty park off the Marcy subway station reading Slow Days, Fast Company and miss the plastic butterflies glued to the roof of Bar Marmont.

You read Nine Stories on the balcony of Soho House West Hollywood and wonder when you’ll feel like you’re the person you’ve become, spending two thousand dollars a year to sit there.

You were never too carsick to read on the train, you just didn’t want to put your phone down.

You say that everyone in Los Angeles is shallow, then lose twenty pounds in twenty days in July of 2013 in Bushwick.

You grew up blocks from the beach in Venice but claim to not be a beach person until now.

You get sunburnt in Far Rockaway and show it off in SoHo hotel pools. You love to say the water heals you but you really prefer to lay next to it, reading and burning.

Your rent is cheaper in New York. Your shower is smaller in Los Angeles.

If you close your eyes and your banking app you can’t tell which one you’re in anymore.

For a moment, in bungalows near Beverly Hills you think you want to kill yourself, at the least that you aren’t afraid to die. You start walking alone at night for the first time since 2008.

But you are. You almost drop your book as you flinch when the train car doors slam as someone switches cars abruptly.

You don’t care if the train isn’t express. You can’t drive anyways and it’s alright being alive.