sugar maples in foreign tongues

oh, to see the mist rise over the mountains.

i believe florida is slowly killing me.
lands that flatline like an ecg monitor,
dull strip malls and dirty schools.
i avert my gaze from the coastline, shimmering in all of its turquoise glory,
and instead look north.

for i believe my heart lies in new england,
for i will not rest until i am back in the state of new york.
i will hold my breath until the last palm tree leaves my line of sight,
and is replaced with the oak and pine of the catskills,
the sugar maple of what i consider to be my home
in the way i consider myself to be irish.
sunny sundays in long island spent among first and second generation immigrants,
but irish myself, in blood only,
no memory of the accents of family members i have not spoken to in seven years.

there is a southern twinge to my voice now and it feels foreign,
the nyc accent i wear an unconscious costume
while my teeth scrape upon the names of my former home.
manhattan
long island
lengthening my o’s and dropping my t’s as if saying those words in that manner can take me back home.
yes, this is my voice.
yes, this is my history.

but i do not know if i say long island the way my mother said it
or the way i believe i should.
i can no longer distinguish between what is my history and what is an act.
i am an echo of an irish american, a shadow of a new yorker.
i am a walking xerox.
my heart has no right to the culture it coddles.
the history it holds close feels like something stolen.

“i basically grew up in manhattan,”
i parrot to my floridian friends, who have lived in the same houses since their conceptions,
but i know for certain that a real new yorker would laugh in my face if they heard such a notion.
i moved to florida when i was eight;
that is hardly a childhood.
but when i think of my youth,
i think of winters in the snow.
i think of the hudson river,
and sunny sundays on long island.
i don’t know where else i am supposed to consider my home.