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Meditations on Staying Safe in the Bronx
“Stay safe,” the white man who is new to my South Bronx neighborhood said to me. He works at a restaurant nearby which had the definition of bad timing by opening up right as the pandemic paused New York State to a standstill. When he said it, I muttered something back, something like, “You, too.” But the weird feeling lingered all day, into the coming weeks, all the days shaped like one endless year.
I cannot remember a time during my entire life when someone has wished me safety, certainly not a white man who probably does not live here, and quite possibly lives in a nearby suburb. At the very least, he is from the North Bronx.
Here is Merriam Webster on a couple of meanings of safe: 1: free from harm or risk: UNHURT. 2 a: Secure from threat of danger, harm or loss.
I love that unhurt is, like a later definition, in all caps, an urgent imprint: HEALTHY, SOUND.
Sometimes, I said it back.
In the world we all so eagerly anticipate, it is only kind to reciprocate the verbalizing of a common concern. But safety means so many different things to different people.
