Harlem in January

“I feel like a ghost, a ghost who slips through walls and watches the human world without taking part in it.”

           

The January sun beat down on thin layer of fuzzy hair on my scalp. Though the holiday ice has melted, my God its still cold. By now, the soot has made its way from the ankle to the knee of my shredded khakis. I sit here on the salty curb and watch as the occasional glamorous black woman struts by me, mink coat draped across her shoulders and open toed heels crunching on the ice while her children drag her by her dainty gloves down the pavement. 

Most everyone else around here is just as poor here as they were in Pittsburgh.How many months has it been now since I left? Since that hot day when Pa struck his fist into down onto the table? Since I told him I was sick? That he wasn’t the only one who suffered in his house? Since Ma cried out to me in the dark pleading me to run faster? Since I disappeared into the hot night? 

I thought Harlem would be different. I thought they didn’t care all too much about sick people here. Well I haven’t found those people. Maybe I never will. The children are the only ones here who run through the streets unafraid.

Out of the corner of my eye I catch a glimpse of a wandering white woman in swiss shoes, like the ones in Ma’s old magazines. Is she lost? 

-Cory Maxson