Ferried

Another day of sunshine, the little room in the Village shrinks and I must get out. I wander aimlessly down Seventh Avenue, weaving through busy worker bees on impossibly short lunch breaks and regret the lack of sunglasses. Manhattan in October is blissfully warm, kind, it refuses to remember the Storm that passed a year ago. I pass the Tower, it is enormous up close but the empty space from what was before remains. Some things New York refuses instead to forget. 

Battery Park is a mess of renovations, the ground is brown and barren, but the Statue of Liberty still beckons in the distance. I grow restless at the edge of the island, see the orange ferry close in on the dock, and I decide to go. Milling with the scores of tourists who heard about the priceless secret, I find a seat inside where no one stays who hasn't made the trip a hundred times before. Last time I sat here I got a root canal in a suburban haven in the middle of Staten Island, and the memory makes me shake my head. The water is not as brown as I remembered, it is a deep green, reminds me there is an ocean there, within reach. There's a line of planes landing at Newark. 

We pass Ellis Island, its bulbous towers tiny in the distance. Millions and millions of people passed through that one gate. Millions of people who had abandoned their every Safety, their every knowledge of what was life, of what was to come, for the dream that this would be better. Some never made it to the mainland. Most of them never again saw the Homes they had left. We pass the island quickly; despite the midday sun I shiver. 

On the return I end up first on the boat. The seats are strangely empty. The trip is telling me something. 

I can't figure out what it is.