“Portrait of a Becoming” by Candace Walsh (fiction ’19)

Portrait of a Becoming

Ludlow Street will always be stuck in 1994, the year I moved from Buffalo to live in an Alphabet City summer sublet. I may also always be stuck in 1994, in complicated thrall to the Perland sisters. 

When I made a reservation to stay at a glossy, high-rise hotel on Ludlow last year, I did so with the urge to collide my present-day self against my younger self. I wanted to slip into the old Ludlow’s grotty sepia, walk past paint-tagged storefront gates closed like brittle eyelids over vacant shops, jam a toehold into my chimerical youth. I also wanted to know what it would feel like to press up against Ludlow Street’s new skin: In short, I ate vegan ice cream scooped at one a.m., found the rooftops of Loisaida buildings to be free of charm, and walked along Houston, feeling both like a ghost and far more solid and grounded than I ever did as a callow twentysomething. 

[…continue reading “Portrait of a Becoming” at Pigeon Pages.]