Ft Worth, Texas

I decided to leave Texas after an entrepreneurship conference in downtown Ft Worth. I wanted to start a business and had been looking around for information for awhile. But by this time I was tired of conferences. They seemed charged with a lot of momentum. A lot of confident people moving around them. But they never felt useful. It was like watching a group of construction workers run around with hammers and yellow hard hats, and realizing after awhile, they weren’t building anything. 

A girl with bubbly eyes and dark hair convinced me to go anyway. She was selling discounted tickets to the conference in the main hall of Tarrant County College. I asked her if it was going to be good. She nodded, and said “It’s supposed to be very good.” So against my better judgment I went. 

It was a small event being held late in the evening, at the nursing school up the street from the college. The Nursing school was brand new. Ultra smooth space grey concrete interiors, furnished with fuzzy blue comfy chairs and ergonomic tables. Yellow signs were bolted around the halls, to guide students from class to class. A few signs were put up the night of the conference to direct people toward the lecture hall.  I followed them down an elevator and through a corridor. Just outside the entrance, the organizers were serving food. They had stacks of purple and white takeout boxes, spread out on long plastic tables. Some with Quesadillas inside, others with burritos. Each served with Spanish rice and little lettuce and tomato salads. I took a quesadilla box and a plastic cup of mango ice tea, then made my way inside.

The conference began when a lady at the bottom of the lecture hall warmed up a PowerPoint slide. She told us how the conference would go. It was a three day event, over the course of which we would form into groups and develop a business idea to pitch to three judges. A woman who had started a cleaning company. A guy who owned a 3D print shop in Ft Worth’s White Settlement neighborhood, and the presenter herself, who’d graduated with an MBA. When her power point ended, the lecturer asked us to introduce ourselves. Then she caught a twinkle in her eye. Her dimples quivered, like she was trying to hold back a laugh, long enough to finish a joke. And she said, “but I want each of you ... to introduce yourself … in a funny voice.”

She smiled and pointed to one person. He stood up and introduced himself in a silly voice. He was funny. He did a country Texas accent. A lot of “Well I do declare.” and “I tell you Hwhat.” The Foghorn Leghorn thing. Everybody laughed. I was mad. I already didn’t want to be there. I felt like I got conned into doing a presentation. But I laughed. She pointed at another person and they did the same. They stood up and introduced themselves in a goofy voice. This time it was less funny. But the game went on. She pointed at another person, and another person. Until by the end, everybody was talking strange.

… 

7 Months later, it was late at night, and I was walking around my neighborhood before the morning flight to Philly. I was Trying to conjure up some sentimentals feelings. I was walking down the wide streets between each unit, reflecting back on what the past five years had been like. The apartment buildings in my complex were wood paneled and painted in a bright yellow color, that faded to butter during the summer heat. The arched doorways of each unit were built of brick, and our patios were shaded by pale green awnings. During the day I could hear kids running and laughing outside my window. At night the complex was stretched out like a constellation of farm houses. Everything was spacious and beyond silent. It was peaceful. Looking back, it was beautiful. But I was ready to go.

The morning came and my Lyft to DFW international. An hour after I got to departures, I was in the air, asleep.  I woke up mid-flight when I heard the flight attendants pushing their cart down the aisle, handing out refreshments. They asked if I preffered a Biscoff cookie or a Nutrigrain bar. I had the cookie. The attendant asked what I’d like to drink. “Tomato juice, please.” She gave me a red and yellow can of Mott’s, and a small plastic cup filled with ice. It had the American Airlines logo embossed on the side. I popped the can and poured some over the ice. Out the window, a sheet of curly white clouds was stretched across the sky. Above them the baby blue air faded into a darker shade. Even higher where the atmosphere is thin, the color unravels into darkness. It’s space black.

I finished my cookie and tomato juice, and dozed off again. When I woke back up, everyone aboard the plane was plucking their bags from overhead bins, and shuffling out. I grabbed my little green suitcase, and made my way down to arrivals where a Lyft, headed towards North Philly picked me up. 

It was a 20 minute drive. Most of the way the driver spoke to someone over the phone, very quietly in Arabic. When we reached North Philly and turned onto Franklin and Bristol his attention fell from the conversation and he looked around the street. Lam’s Kitchen, the Chinese store across from my grandparents place, had a window boarded up. Some sneakers were hanging from wires above the street, and there were some crushed red solo cups halfway in the gutter. The Alley cats were out. A black cat with short ears and green eyes, and another cat with brown spots like a chocolate cow, were playing with shiny black corner store bag floating around the street.

I got out of the Lyft and grabbed my suitcase from the trunk. My cousin opened the front door and walked down the steps. He was wearing a silk bonnet, some loose sweats, and a pair of wire frame glasses. He looked like he was wearing our grandma’s clothes. He helped me bring the suitcase up the stairs and inside. The house looked the same as it always did. The floors, the same beige carpet. The back wall of the living room, still tiled in diamond shaped mirrors. The large mirror in the dining room was still there, and another on a closet door. Framed pictures of the family, and foster kids, and friends from the community everywhere. Christian posters and quotes that said things like, “God Loves you and he wants you to serve him” or “Mathew 8:16. Profanity goes into a child's ear and out of their mouth.” Or above the coffee pot in the kitchen, a sign that say “All I need today is a little coffee, and a whole lot of Jesus.” Knick knacks and kitsch, throughout the house. Tiny flashlights, many of them, millions maybe, hidden in drawers and desk and cabinets. Post It notes with people’s phone numbers. Pennies not to be turned over before 2040. Bottles of witch hazel, and sweet oil, and anti-freeze. The house looked the same but the smell was different. The place smelled like blunt roaches and cat litter. On our way in my cousin told me “It’s been a lot different since Mom left.” 

He asked if I was hungry. I told him that I was going to walk up to El Grecos and get a chicken cheesesteak. He asked if I’d come to the laundromat with him first, so he could get some cash. We locked up the place and walked into the Lucky laundromat behind Lam's kitchen. Inside, to the right there were a couple rows of washers, and a wall of double decker dryers to the back. To the left side of the laundromat was a plexiglass wall that the the store clerk was standing behind. The clerk was young. He had a very neutral expression. Not condemning or condoning anything, just watching. 

Another guy was standing near the entrance. He had his hair in two long braids beneath a blue L.A Dodgers cap. My cousins recognized him. After he withdrew some cash from the clerk, he asked the guy in the Dodgers hat if he had anything. He didn’t. We headed inside the El Grecos and I ordered my chicken cheesesteak. My grandparent had known the owner George since he’d started the store. George’s daughters, tall Greek women, had worked the counter when I was a kid. Since I’d left George had retired. He still lived upstairs but didn’t work the store anymore. His daughter had all left to start their careers. I was about to ask the new counter girl if my cheesesteak came with fries. Before I could get the words out though, she cut me short, and said “It comes with fries.” It was strange. It felt like she read my mind. It felt like she was upset that she had read my mind. Like I had left something open, that was supposed to be shut. My cousin ordered a burger and fries. 

A few awkward minutes passed, before our food was ready. She slid two large brown paper bags over to us, folded and stapled with receipts, then we headed home. Walking across the street my cousin recognized another guy. Tall and thin. Serious eyes, tight with puffy red bags underneath. My Cousin asked if he was selling anything. Today he was. They passed hands, and we went inside to eat.

The chicken cheesesteak was decent. The fries were alright. Kind of pale, limp. Not too bad dipped in ketchup though. Halfway through eating. I told my cousin “I feel like I’m acting strange. I’m being too bright” He laughed at me and said “Yeah, the way you ordered you sounded like an NPC” 

Menlo Park, California

Alex Rudolph

My sights were never set on Philadelphia, but they weren't really set anywhere. I'd gone to school in Washington, DC, met my girlfriend and then I moved back home to Menlo Park, California and she went back to Trumbull, Connecticut. The goal was just to live together gain.

The Bay Area was a great place to grow up and I still love visiting, but the tech boom (and bust, and subsequent boom) directed a vibrant part of the country's focus squarely in one direction. I graduated college in 2012, one year after Facebook moved its headquarters to my hometown, and the difference on my return was palpable. Everybody in every restaurant was loudly talking about their start-up and so many of the great independent businesses had been razed. I worked simultaneously at an internship in San Francisco and a book store in Palo Alto, occasionally skipping weekends to juggle a job-and-a-half. It was unsustainable.

On the other side of the country, my girlfriend was studying music therapy and getting a grad degree at Drexel. I only visited her once, for a week in the middle of a cold winter, but I saw enough to recognize Philly's perks. Reading Terminal Market alone would have sealed the deal. My internship continued to demand I do nearly-unpaid work on my vacation, not realizing how much more appealing they were making the idea of never returning home.

I did go back, of course, and I was laid off when the place I was interning collapsed, of course. During out daily check-in, my boss had let me know work was drying up and that I should take an unpaid month off and check-in again later to see if the company could bring me back on. When I emailed him after enough time had passed, he responded as if he'd already laid me off. "Thanks for checking in," my apparently-former boss wrote, "and know that you can always check in. I have meant to send you a note for weeks - but I have simply been insanely busy." Surprise, the company you worked at closed a few weeks back.

As much as I loved being around my family and as great as the book store was, it was time to go. My partner had a few months left in her grad program and the plan was for me to move out there for six months or so. She'd finish up her studies and then we'd assess our options. That was over ten years ago.

Moving to Philly seems quaint now. I sent a few boxes of clothes and things out in advance of my arrival and paid something like $300 in shipping. That's still a lot of money to me now, but I can't imagine moving across the country now, with everything I've amassed, rising freight costs and a three-year-old would cost anything less than $3,000.

I flew into Trenton and that was it, I was a Philly resident. I say that hesitantly-- I know a lot of Philadelphians would still not consider me one of them after my decade-plus in the city-- but it's difficult to feel too bad about that, given I myself was repulsed by the waves of young professionals who terraformed the Bay Area.

We lived in a studio in Germantown at first, and while we had a car, my wife was using it for work. The regional rail only came in every hour. I'd moved to Philly, but I couldn't really appreciate it. I felt cut off. Center City was right there and I could see it, but getting there was a pain and I spent too much time in our tiny apartment, applying to jobs and watching the same twenty movies I'd watched in California.

Still, exploring the city was a joy. Even if relying on an infrequent and unpredictable train put a strain on impulsive trips, I was able, in the time between my arrival and the start of my first job here, to explore museums, neighborhoods and comic shops. I was able to see Philly as a city, which is not always easy when you're in a new place. And while I never need to go to the Mütter Museum again, I went enough times in those first few months. Unemployment can be hell. It can also be a small gift.

After a couple years, we moved to Old City, which was dramatically nicer. I could walk to things. The bus came regularly. Our apartment didn't smell like the neighbors' cigarette smoke. It was like we were actually in Philly.

Two years after that, we settled in Northern Liberties. As I said, we'd intended to stay in Philly about six months after I moved in. While the months stacked into a year and one year became a few, we'd always intended to look at other places. Maybe find somewhere more affordable, maybe some city closer to family. That may happen in the future. But Northern Liberties felt like home. We got married. We adopted a dog, Pumpkin Pie. We had a baby, Jasper. We decorated for Halloween and spent a Christmas in our home.

Jasper started preschool three months ago. Somewhere between Germantown and Northern Liberties, the city began to feel like a place I lived, rather than a place I was killing time in between making big decisions. I've seen more concerts in this city than I've seen in any other and held more jobs, for longer periods of time. I could be happy anywhere if I was with my family, but I truly believe I'll be happiest here, in Philly. Unless Kettle Black and Middle Child Clubhouse move to Cleveland or something. I'm kidding, I think.

I work for the City right now, after a few years in the nonprofit world, and I truly feel connected to this place. There are worse routines to fall into than the one where you work a 9-to-5, enjoy the company of your family and appreciate a city like Philadelphia on weekends. It's the best routine I've ever had.

Casper, Wyoming

Autumn Marie Cazier

Fishtown Writing Submission 

Casper College was, at the time, the only two-year accredited program in the country offering an Associates in Dance Performance. It was 2018- my senior year. As my peers selected majors and Universities, I chose to follow my passion in performing arts. After receiving a scholarship to Casper College, a school that I had never heard of in the tiny town of Casper, Wyoming- I decided to take a tour. The school, for me, was love at first sight. Several options for on-campus housing for a junior college, one of the most rigorous dance programs in the nation, and great student to teacher ratio. It was just a bonus that each dorm came with its own private bathroom- which, for many students, was enough to say yes. 

At 18, I packed my bags to the windiest city in the west as my parents made the six hour drive on move-in day. My first years of adulthood in Wyoming were anything but typical for the average college experience. Livestock judging, rodeos, mountains, and hiking trails where wild horses would roam, and the deer were unbothered by traffic. It was quiet- at times even serene- though the winters were treacherous. Casper, hometown of Dick Cheney and Matthew Shepard, is one of the most populated towns in Wyoming, with a population of just over 50,000. As college kids we frequented the 24 hour Walmarts, Dennys, the dying mall, and driving to abandoned towns. It was the most fun we could find.

2020 came and and everyone was either graduating or switching majors. I decided it was time for something different, as I wanted to explore more of college life and the social experience. In a drastic shift, I decided to pursue Criminal Justice. I felt refreshed with the newfound sense of motivation and confidence. But as March loomed, and a two week spring break turned into a global pandemic, life quickly changed. The- already tiny town became much smaller in quarantine, and I lived alone in a private dorm. My formative college years became swallowed in solitude, classes turned virtual, and in-person contact became scarce. During the height of the pandemic, tragedy struck. A call from my mother came the day before the election results in November. As we were all glued to our TVs, and holding out hope for a better future. My mother informed me that two of our friends were tragically murdered in a shooting in Las Vegas, Nevada. A dispute gone wrong with their unstable neighbor had taken the lives of, 39- year old Diana Hawatmeh and her 12- year old Joseph ‘Jojo’ Hawatmeh. 

We were at a loss, it felt as though my whole world had shut down as I grieved alone. My soul companion was a hamster I had snuck into the dorms. I reflected on my many years with Diana, her gorgeous house and equally beautiful spirit- Jojo’s giggles and his radiant childlike innocence. I wallowed in my depression, I flunked my classes, and felt paralyzed in my bed. As the pandemic came and went, life continued around me, but, I didn’t follow it. I felt trapped, immobile, and yearned for something more. A change, a sense of community, something greater. I began prioritizing my dreams and aspirations of pursuing the arts, finding ways to merge my new major with a creative outlet. I spent most of my free time listening to the stories of other survivors and those who had lost loved ones to gun violence, hoping to gain a sense of closure and validation. 

It was then that I formed a plan. I would move to New York City- the theater capital of the world- to debut a full length play production centered on gun violence awareness. I had lived there for two years as a teenager and considered those the most formative years of my life. With a new year on the horizon, it was time to start planning. Another tragedy struck in the spring-our friend Elizabeth lost her life, this time from a fatal infection. My grades and mental health continued to decline. I had to face everything at once, and the plans that I had stowed away at a future date, came forward at a throttling rate. I had to leave within the next few months. 

With short planning comes a lack of finances, and though New York City was a faraway dream, the timing just couldn’t have been worse. I had a long conversation with my best friend, who planned to move across the country with me and start a new life. We had to choose somewhere else-somewhere more affordable, at least for now. We began looking at the outskirts: how close could we get to New York without actually living in it? It came down to two choices- New Jersey or Philadelphia. If we went with New Jersey, we would already have a support system there through my friends who had come from New York. If we went with Philadelphia, we’d still get the big-city experience at a much more affordable rate. With only one of us having a driver's license, and the other eager to find more opportunities, the choice became clear. We joined housing groups on Facebook for both regions, spoke with numerous people and viewed several virtual tours. That is, until we found a perfect little spot in the heart of Fishtown. 

In the last week of May 2021, my best friend and her parents loaded up a U-Haul truck with her two cats and all of our belongings making the several-day drive from Wyoming to Pennsylvania. I flew, and met them there on June 1st, right at the front door to our new house. In the first few days of arriving in Philly, it became apparent that we were completely unprepared. Without either of us securing jobs ahead of time, and with her living in Wyoming her entire life, it was a major adjustment. Facing the entity that is SEPTA, navigating a walkable city, and meeting the most loyal sports fans in the world (Go Birds!) -Philly was truly a breed of its own. That was four years ago. Through numerous relationships, new roommates, endless jobs, hardships, and even more tragedies, we’ve persevered. The show I wrote on gun violence is now a six time award nominee. All in that very same Fishtown home. Moving to a big city is hard enough, let alone when you’ve barely been on your own. There were many times where I didn’t think we’d make it, or that we were too broke to stay. People came and went, opportunities arose, and then faded. But all in all, I wouldn’t want to witness an Eagles win anywhere else in the world.

Just Like They Said It Would Be

Gina Brower

I moved to East Kensington in November of 2005, when the cold sharpened the corners of the

day and dark came early, like a neighbor who lets himself in. I’d been living in New Jersey,

which meant the East Coast wasn’t new so much as a language I had learned to speak since I

was born. Philadelphia felt like a dialect adjacent to one I knew: the same hard consonants,

different punchlines.

The house was a three-story brick rowhome near York–Dauphin—three floors of narrow

decisions. The vestibule was tiled in a stubborn checkerboard, the kind of pattern that survives

tenants and trends. A steep, switchback staircase cut the house like a spine, grout dust caught

forever in the corners of each step. The first floor held a living room that wanted to be a parlor

and a kitchen that admitted its limitations with a shrug. The second floor had two small rooms

with doors that complained in a sweet, wooden way. The third floor was a long, low room

under the roof, a crow’s-nest with a battered skylight and a view of a vacant lot stippled with

frost when morning remembered to arrive. From up there, the El was a rumor you could see—a

train shiver, a thin roar, the sense of something deciding to pass.

The landlord said the furnace worked “when spoken to nicely.” The radiators on all three floors

banged like the house was haunted by a polite ghost who knocked before entering. I lined the

old windows with plastic and used a hair dryer to tighten them until the panes drummed. On

the second day, the bodega owner, Mr. Singh, pressed a roll of packing tape into my gloved

hand and said, “Welcome. Tape solves half of life.” In New Jersey, strangers apologize for

existing near you; in East Kensington, they equip you.

I learned quickly that November light in Philadelphia is brief and honest. By four-thirty a hush

falls that is not silence—more the city tucking in its noise. I walked my new block with my hands

in my coat pockets and felt the place taking my measure: tire shops with hand-painted signs, a

church bulletin board lettered by someone who believed vowels should be evenly spaced, a

warehouse with windows carefully broken into a mosaic as if vandalism here also had

standards. Fishtown had the first clean café and Northern Liberties had rumors of a future with

lofts and cocktails, but East Kensington in ’05 felt like a workshop—tools out, music on, nothing

finished, everything possible.

I came from New Jersey with its clean edges and faithful sky. There, even the cold has manners;

the bus driver says “thanks” when you step off. Here, the El said yo in iron, and rowhouse

radiators replied in steam. Back in New Jersey, when I lived there, life had been narrower in a

different way—commutes, strip-mall brightness, boardwalk summers, the ritual of beach tags.

That history made Ocean City a part of my personal map long before Philadelphia did. But now

OCNJ wasn’t a summer treat; it was a winter reset I could reach when the city tuned me too

tightly.

To be completely upfront, the city hasn’t always been kind to me. The small frictions—traffic

that feels personal, sidewalk trash that edits your path, the unsolicited soundtrack of

someone’s speaker—were just texture until one cool, calm morning at 7:15 a.m., when a

stranger tried to fold me out of my own life. No words, tinted windows, no witnesses. I

shouted, fought, hit the pavement hard. Two fingers broke; the fear stayed longer. Therapy,

meds, and the slow faith of showing up carried me back to myself. Last month I noticed it plain:

no panic attacks. A small sentence, but I keep it like a key. And on days when the memory

pressed too close, I drove east—the bridge, the marsh, the causeway—to Ocean City. New

Jersey stopped being “away” and became a respite: salt and wind that reset my breathing so I

could come home and hold Philly again.

The first week, my trash-day ignorance outed me. A woman leaned out her second-floor

window, robe tied like a thesis, and called, “Thursday, babe!” No malice—accuracy. Later she

passed me on the sidewalk and handed me a snow shovel with a cracked handle. “For now. I

got the whole one.” That was Irma, though I didn’t know her name yet. She became the kind of

neighbor who has keys to your house you don’t remember giving her, because of a time the

door stuck and the mail needed rescuing.

Food organized the cold. Someone told me to learn roast pork before cheesesteaks—sharp

provolone that bit back, broccoli rabe with a refusal I respected. On Passyunk a server put down

coffee without waiting for a decision, which felt like the city’s thesis: you exist, so you must

need warmth. Scrapple arrived disguised as skepticism and stayed as devotion. Water ice could

wait for spring; November belonged to pho that fixed the part of loneliness that hides behind

the eyes, and church-basement pierogies in Port Richmond where volunteers corrected how I

said the word and handed me a paper plate like a benediction. “Decent food?” someone asked.

Indecent to call it decent, I thought, writing a grocery list like a letter to the city.

Work found me at a thrift store on South Street, where the register beeped like a distant cousin

of joy. At lunch I wandered the Italian Market and learned to order turkey “thin, like paper.”

The butcher wrapped it like origami and called me sweetheart without condescension. In a

used bookshop, the owner traded me one for two and slid a zine into my bag with a penciled

note: You look like you’re here on purpose. That note lived above my desk on the third floor,

where the roof pitched low and the wind found every excuse to talk. When I doubted, I touched

the paper like a mezuzah and kept going.

Friends started as categories: Tuesday friends at the bar who shout the same lyric when it

lands; Friday friends who will hold your ladder and return the casserole dish; the imagined

Sunday friend who might someday help you fold sorrow neatly. In New Jersey, friendships

assemble quietly over time—hockey, pork roll, politeness, repeat. In Philadelphia, friendship

shows up wearing boots, says your name loud, and brings a space heater. Irma knocked one

morning when the furnace decided to be philosophical. She set the heater in the hallway and

said, “Two hours. You text me if it lies.” She was training me to ask the city for what I needed. I

didn’t need to be proud; I needed to be warm.

On days when the noise tuned too high, I drove to Ocean City, New Jersey like a returning

migrant. Off-season, the boardwalk is winter theater: shuttered stands with cartoon suns rolled

down for sleep, Gillian’s Wonderland rides folded into silhouettes, gulls in committee, wind

arguing with the slats. Ocean City is dry, which makes the quiet louder. I warmed my hands on

hot chocolate from the one place that stayed open and watched a lone surfer bob in pewter

water like a punctuation mark. I had lived in New Jersey; my body remembered how the salt air

names you and demands nothing in return. Those drives were not an escape from Philadelphia;

they were an eastward breath that let me hold the city better when I came back.

Were the people different from back home? Yes, in ways that corrected me. In New Jersey I

learned to be gracious. In Philadelphia I learned to show up. A man outside a tire shop broke his

soft pretzel in half and handed me a piece while arguing about who made the best ones in the

tri-state area. Another stranger taught me how to stand on the subway without holding the

pole. “Knees loose,” she said. “Don’t fight the train. Expect it.” When I laughed too loudly on

the street, no one flinched. When I cried once, quickly, on the corner, two different women

produced tissues like magicians and pretended not to look at my face while they waited for my

breath to come back. “If a man bothers you,” Irma told me, “yell for Frank.” I never had to, but

knowing Frank existed altered the physics of the block.

The three stories of the house each taught me something. The first floor taught me company:

shoes by the door, conversations carried across the threshold like groceries. The second floor

taught me privacy: closing a door can be a sacrament. The third floor taught me to listen—to

the El, to radiators, to the voice that doesn’t always sound like mine but lives in the same chest.

I slept under the sloped ceiling that winter like a hand folded over a secret. Some nights the

radiators shuddered and sighed, and I imagined the house arguing with the cold in a language I

was learning to trust.

By New Year’s Day, I stood on Broad Street watching the Mummers make a glittered argument

for joy in thirty degrees. I texted a shakily framed photo to friends in New Jersey and got a

string of question marks back. “Long story,” I replied, knowing that everything here is. Later, on

the third-floor landing, I watched the sky bruise and heal over the vacant lot while a kid below

perfected his scooter hop, the clap of wheels on concrete echoing up to me like a practice

prayer.

I kept going to OCNJ when the city asked me to. I knew which exit gave me the first smell of salt

and where to park near the music pier when the wind bullied. I bought saltwater taffy in a

paper bag that crackled like fire and ate a piece on the beach with my coat zipped to my chin,

thinking how New Jersey had once been home, and how now it was a tuning fork—tap it and

my whole body rang true. I drove back over the bridge with the heat on high, and by the time

the skyline stitched itself across the windshield, I was ready for Philly’s sentences again.

Did I make friends? Slowly, then suddenly. The first Sunday friend arrived in February, when her

mother got sick, and we sat on my second-floor couch and watched a game with the sound

down and drank ginger ale and let the words we didn’t have settle between us like another

blanket. We didn’t call it love; we shoveled each other’s steps before the sun hit the ice.

What did I think about Philadelphia when I got here? That it doesn’t pretend. It doesn’t perform

kindness; it practices it. It will scold you and fix it in the same paragraph. It will lend you

vocabulary (yo, jawn, the correct use of youze) and test you until you stop performing and start

participating. It will make every object—pipes, doors, radiators—into a conversation you are

invited to join. It will hand you tape and a hammer and ask if you’re in on the work.

Was it different from New Jersey? Yes, the way breathing into your hands is different from

breathing onto glass. New Jersey gave me steadiness; New Jersey gave me respite. Philadelphia

gave me heat. New Jersey gave me a place to face the ocean and remember I’ve done this

before: arrive, translate, belong.

By spring 2006 I could walk from the first floor to the third in the dark without stumbling; the

house and I had agreed on where our edges were. I knew which bodega had the good pretzels

after ten and which bus driver told jokes like they were a second route. I knew the shore wind

would be right there if I needed it. When planes descended back into Philadelphia after trips to

see family, the rows of houses looked like unbuttoned teeth, and I felt my shoulders drop. The

El rattled something fluent in me. Mr. Singh shouted through the bodega door about tape, and I

laughed into my scarf.

Were the people different from back home? Yes, in ways that made me braver. Is the food

decent? It saved me—no exaggeration. Have I found anything that resonated? The hush under

the El at 5 a.m.; the argument about pretzels; Ocean City in November when the boardwalk is

empty and the tide keeps the beat; a note above my desk that says I’m here on purpose. Have I

made friends? Enough of the right kinds: shout-for-Frank kind, space-heater kind, Sunday kind.

East Kensington didn’t seduce me. It handed me tape and a hammer and asked, “We’re fixing

this. You in?” In the cold November air, I said yes. Up and down three flights, the house learned

the sound of my feet. The city answered like it had been expecting me. I still mean it.a