I hate Whole Foods. I’m sorry, but I do. 

I hate the check-out lines. I hate the screen, poised in ascendance, that everyone in line is staring at while we wait for our assigned register. I hate the confusion that ensues when someone doesn’t understand how it works. I hate the obedience of us who do understand. I hate how effortlessly I follow. I hate that it’s efficient. I hate Whole Foods. 

(I like that the box of raspberries I’m buying is $2.99.)

I remember that winter was a forgetting season. 

Forget how cold. Forget the sun, it doesn't miss you. I'm sitting on my couch thinking in terms of square footage and forgetting things we used to do. How did we fill the time? I cross sidewalks on ice. No one has come yet to scrape it away. Salt in scattered piles did some of the job, but I’m still slipping. Coming up from underground, the cold air clears my mind; pulls back a cover.

These are memories. I’m not even wearing a scarf. When I write about winter, do I write about before? Or do I write about now? 

Then: I wonder if the wind used to be warm. It seems impossible. 

Now: Scarfless, but in two days, we’ll have snow.

Then: A packed-up ball of ice fell from the facade of my office building, brushed past my shoulder, and landed in the inches between my boot and someone else’s. We looked down at the shards, up at each other. That almost hit you! she said. 

Now: The fountain in the park still isn’t frozen. 

I order iced tea while wearing gloves. Someday—someday soon they say—we’ll forget winter for good.

What else can I possibly say?

I miss the intersection of 23rd and Broadway. I miss that strange harshly slanted apex on that one building—I don’t even know what it is—but I see it when we’re walking north. I used to wonder if the slanted roof was also the slanted ceiling of some empty penthouse. 

How is One Vanderbilt coming along? I miss the scaffolding on Madison near Grand Central. From the D train I used to see a tower that looked like the burned-out end of a cigarette; but I can never identify it while I’m in Manhattan. When I was in Manhattan. Must be a trick of light. 

I miss spontaneous decisions. Where will we go? What will we see? I miss the uneven cobbled sidewalk alongside the park on the way to the Met. I paused a documentary I was watching (we do everything indoors) just to look for a moment longer at a B-roll shot of the intersection at 72nd and Fifth. And again at a typical overhead shot of the whole city. Maudlin, maybe, but I felt something. 

This time of year, the windows at the coffee shop I like (29th between Sixth and Seventh) would all be open. I’d be eating banana bread and watching people, waiting for a friend. Complaining about the heat. I’ll never complain again, I swear. I walked along Fifth almost every day when the weather was nice. At least to 33rd, sometimes to Union Square. Sometimes, now, I can’t fall asleep because my legs aren’t tired enough.  

I miss crossing the street at the light in the middle of 42nd Street, between Fifth and Sixth. I looked down the street and saw signs for the theaters, and Whole Foods. I even miss Whole Foods.

The heat of the sun on my arms after being lightly frozen by air conditioner all day. My automatic movements and vague yearnings. I miss them, too. 

I miss you.