After Winter

We were so tired. We had bought our refridgerable goods and were waiting for the L, so ready to go home. And then we realized, we had not once gone uptown to see the skyscrapers; we hadn't even peeked at Times Square. A quick change of platforms, a late night train to 42nd street, and here it is, here are the lights that never go out. We sat and stared at the spectacle. Sat on Broadway and ate the ice cream so it wouldn't melt; left the fate of the rest to prayer.

When I left that elevator from the New Jersey Transit train tracks at Penn Station, I felt like I shed a cloak of outsidedness, of playing the tourist. I fell in with the floods of people, I was back in my City, where I belong. One of the millions.

God, I love being one of the millions.
New York, honey, I love being one of the millions, of you.