Elmira: a eulogy

I want to write about Elmira. I want to go back too, but only sometimes.

I’ve made the drive so many times; I can see the whole thing if I close my eyes. It’s really just a straight shot from my godforsaken hometown to this godforsaken city. Just about four hours.

Though equal in their failings, Elmira is one of a kind–that kind being both deeply depressing and achingly hopeful. It’s a fucked combination, and one notorious for keeping people stuck.

It is disguised liminality; stretched and distorted by time. This place is not a definitive Here. It’s a graveyard the size of a town; one with big, iron gates where no one rests. 

With dreams fully intact they grow older and then old–the lovely citizens of Elmira, New York.

Without loss there is no mourning–there is no call to be remembered, no back cover. Here–or rather there–dreams outlive the body. 

They may choose to stay–these dreams–in the empty stomach of some small girl who found this place at nineteen. I only needed a place that could help me learn to feed myself. It seems a small ask, but was in fact impossible–in Elmira at least. I learned to eat at 5,000 feet, but that’s for another time. 

I fell in love in Elmira. I fell in love with the safety of the house that I lived in–the one filled with other anorexics who were just as cold and lonely–with the way it felt to eat again–with the hills and the rain and the hopefulness.

It’s romantic so long as I don’t think about it. 

I want to go back, but I don’t think I ever will. But it’s nice to remember.

I love you my dear, sweet reader.

Take care.