In Their Own Words
Molly Ledbetter on “New York”
New York
In September, I left.
Like all the other assholes.
The house in Tennessee has
nice lights—
a low, sexy sofa.
In the mornings, I lint-roll the
sexy sofa.
+
Sometimes, I play Moon River on my piano
and sometimes I
dance.
Now that it’s warmer,
I open the windows so I can hear
the little birds sing
how bad you wanted me
gone.
Reprinted from Air Ball (After Hours Editions, 2025) with the permission of author and publisher. All rights reserved.
On “New York” from Air Ball
This was the first thing I ever published. I wrote it when I moved back to Nashville from New York the September of Covid. Generally, I do not like and never would refer to Covid in my writing. I don’t like dating things with events like that.
At the time, it was a real thing to “leave” New York. A lot of people did, but a lot of people didn’t. I am not sure that people will understand “like all the other assholes” now, but I also think that’s ok.
You know sometimes when you say the same thing over and over to people when they ask a question? You need an easy answer to a complex question, like an elevator pitch.
So here’s my New York thing I say.
I never would have left if it weren’t for Covid. I had been having a really hard time up there. Sometimes, depending on how well I knew the person, I’d get into the reasons why I was having a really hard time.
You would have had to drag me out. When I say this part, I demonstrate what I mean by clawing my hands through the air. This great house in Nashville became available, and that was the push I needed.
Getting out of the noise really helped me creatively. When I was in New York, I was always trying to figure out ways of taking breaks. There were too many people who were doing it better than me, too many voices, too much cool. When I moved home it was an admission, at that time, that I wasn’t cool, which was something that I cared a lot about. It feels obvious to say now that ended up being very freeing.
I hadn’t anticipated how the move would shift my proximity to my hometown in a way that felt very generative to my writing. I had a lot to rub up against moving back to a place I had resisted for so long.
I made a home that was very peaceful. I got one of those low Restoration Hardware “cloud” sofas that I was obsessed with keeping clean. I’ve never had a house that people come and go, like an entertaining house. That just does not come naturally to me.
I got a keyboard as a way of doing something other than being on my phone during Covid. I started taking virtual lessons.
I don’t normally write discreet poems like this. I would say my writing is much more prose than poetry. New York is the first piece in the book and the only discreet poem. More than anything, it sets the tone, like an epigraph, for the rest of the book.
