Echo

It was on the AirTrain it hit. The skyline spread out in the distance; small, grey. I said to my sister, Well that's that. I can't leave it again. I was lost to it in an instance. Waiting for the New Jersey train to take us there, I danced around the platform, like a child.

But once we were on those streets, once New York was safely in my reach again, once everything was right there, how calm my senses. I know this place. I know that street corner, that those buildings will tower up at the end of that avenue, nothing is strange, new, undiscovered. The pasta factory looked the same, the sunset over the Williamsburg bridge, the subway voice. I rang the buzzer to a familiar door on Morton Street and she had no idea I was coming. It was as though I had never left. We found them at the bar and it was as though not a moment had passed. I slipped neatly into my New York City grid and I can't believe I was ever gone.

I go to bed feeling nothing but sleepy. At the other end of the loft lie hearts that overwhelm me with their mere presence. At the edge of the river lies an island that knows my name when I forget it myself. There is nothing to say, nothing to digest. For a moment, for a minute, I am whole.