Metaphors for New York City

I took her to the Flatbush Farm (more of a barn)
and dined on Bumble Tea and buttered mussels,
on a puck of pungent cheese and on pecans.
Beneath the strung up lights and fire escapes we
traded made-up metaphors for N.Y.C. It's a bowl
of broth with a fork in it. It's a stack of seashells
far from the sea. We filled in the blanks
that we left for each other and I stuck that stinky
cheese into my purse. Forgot it there for days.
Wrapped in waxed paper, it didn't smell at all.
Maybe it's a metaphor: for the city, or for love, or
for evenings steeped in something fragrant and forgotten.
Then forgotten. It's true what she said: I wish I were
more present. I'm lost in those alleys smirked
with graffiti; among silhouettes of friends pinned on
the sky blown blue with silence. I'm here and there,
there, there. This city is a patchwork of those bits
stuck in my mind and I am so hung up on her,
on metaphors and mussels; every corner of this city.