Neighbor
Dear Diary:
The first time I met my Brooklyn neighbor, he was sitting outside with a friend, cigar in hand, on a hot July evening. Beach chairs on the sidewalk. Tank top under a button down unbuttoned. Sweat on the bald head.
“Dude, how do I have so much fun?” I asked him.
“That was easy,” he said, his smile missing a tooth. “Be a New Yorker.”
We’ve been friends ever since, the kind of stop and talk long enough – he speaks with a Bronx accent – that I know he’s divorced, often in love, and does a job protecting the public. He’s upset about rats on the property and hires a friend to plant in his front yard every spring.
One morning, he told me that his cat, Fidel, was dead. Fidel is beloved; I have pictures of him posing on various steps in the block. My neighbor didn’t seem upset when he told me what had happened, but his vivacious gestures seemed to mask the loss he felt.
That evening, a guy who used to roam the nearby bodega tree came with a box of mangoes. He knocked on my neighbor’s door. When he came out, the guy nodded and opened the box.
A tiny kitten poked its head out.
– Laura Buccieri
Long day
Dear Diary:
Two summers ago, I was traveling to visit the Statue of Liberty when I started to feel overwhelmed.
On the return trip to Manhattan, instead of going sightseeing with my son, I snuck downstairs to take a nap, and the hum of the engine lulled me to sleep.
– Andrew G. Raymond
3 things
Dear Diary:
I was on the subway on a Saturday midsummer change of service. A special committee has been formed on the vehicle that I am traveling in. We were debating where the woman sitting next to me should move to the Brooklyn Museum.
After deciding which stop made the most sense, she and I talked about our lives when we got there. She has lived in New York for more than 50 years. I just moved in after a year away. She used to work IT for a company based in Germany, and I also work in technology.
When we got to where she was going, I got off the bus with her and together we waited for the next train. I wonder if anyone thinks we’re grandma and grandchild, not strangers who met just 20 minutes ago on the rerouted D street.
When I mentioned I had just been through a breakup, she told me that in bad moments, I need to say three things to myself: “I love you. I will take care of you. I will never leave you.”
She insisted I memorize the phrases, and I mumbled them over and over in the sticky subway car.
As we got off the train, I started asking her name. Instead of telling me, she made me repeat what she taught me.
“I love you,” I said. “I will take care of you. I will never leave you.”
She sped toward the museum, and I headed back down East Parkway to go home. I said these words again, this time only to myself. They barely hear the noise of the traffic.
– Ethan Peterson-New
Bird watching
Dear Diary:
Against the iron fence near the Town of Stuyvesant
I leaned over and watched a flock of birds soar
Exploit the summer sky and leisurely
Equally, as if they had been netted
The particles of a diffused mind.
Which roof has landed, which city’s roof is flat?
A bird alone, against the common will,
Slide closer to a cloud and a ravishing part
The space that she has become her own.
Then I took her away, more than a thousand meters away,
In the long time since extinguishing
Mute against the grist, for my friend.
– Herbert Klein
Paying attention
Dear Diary:
It was December 1967. I had just finished basic training at Fort Dix in New Jersey and was heading to Boston in uniform. For reasons I no longer remember, I stopped in New York City along the way.
Walking on the Upper East Side during a snowstorm, I followed another man in uniform. He was older, and the familiar gold-striped cap identified him as an officer.
I give a quick greeting. It was not returned. The uniform was strange, so I assumed he was a foreign officer. Military courtesy still requires me to salute.
A little further on the road, I met another officer and greeted in a different way without being recognized. His uniform is also strange to me.
The third time it happened, the man I greeted ignored me while holding the door for a couple on the way into a large apartment building.
I realized I was greeting people with doors.
– Stephen Salisbury
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Illustration by Agnes Lee
