Yellow Mill River

Yellow Mill River 

It is winter. I am awake. The street is slick with a chilly light rain that will soon turn to snow. I am six and cannot sleep. The window is cold, I trace my name in the frost. Night is suspended between sleep and sleet. I am a child insomniac carefully watching the rain and the river.

The view from our window was the Yellow Mill River.  The river ended right before the NY/NewHaven railroad tracks surrounded by streets named Waterview and Seaview Avenues.  When my mother and I moved to Father Panick Village, our first apartment, I was 4 years old. A three room apartment seemed spacious to me compared to the boarding house rooms my mom had rented since her arrival from Puerto Rico. The late night view from the bedroom room held a fascination for me as I watched the lights of the factory reflected on the water and tried to imagine who lived across the water, who were the people who never turned their lights out, who, like me, could be up so late.