Returning to New York City

This may sound hasty:
I was overwhelming as a city block.
I had severed a series
of convoluted vows, carried five
dried berries from the soil under
the manzanita, through shrubland
and grizzlebush, I bled from an old
wound in Santa Fe, rose stale
and penniless from a plains state.
O New York you are, as adolescence is,
littered with small deaths. I wear your skins
that curdle on me, the stench of chattel
bought and sold. I took you out
for a date. You ached on me
the next day like a bruise. I lunched
on your steps and at night,
I became complicated with you,
shattered along your fissures,
your million lighted windows
clouded like milk glass.