Hudson and 10th

The sun sets in that ridiculous hue of pink, all overcast smog-filled over-saturated isn't-there-an-instagram-filter-just-like-this and it takes your breath away. Little beads of light trickle down Christopher Street as you turn the corner, because it's been too many years and your gut cannot navigate these crooked Village cross streets like it used to. You still find your way eventually. We get drunk on perfect margaritas and sit outside because hell if it isn't warm enough despite that storm that passed through last night, and he tells you stories of the West as you wonder of the marvel from whence you both came.

There was a moment today, when I walked home down Houston, and the people whirled around me like ignorant bees in the pursuit of their Dream, and the sunlight warmed just so against the skin, and the New York City Promises of Tomorrow played some made up ball game at the edge of the court only they could understand, and I crossed the street at the red light because I knew the cars would be coming just like that and it was fine, that every doubt that had crossed my mind was silenced. Every question mark and sad Stockholm evening staring at the radio tower in the distance and thinking what the hell am I doing this for receded into a quaint memory of the naive past. We went to that other bar, the one you loved and where he looked at you with smiles in his eyes so many years ago, and the Empire State Building lit up the corner of the park where you all sat with your deli lunch and unaccustomed heat flush before the map had connected in your mind, and it was all laughs as though nothing was out of the ordinary at all. I forget, so easily I forget, just a week in and this should all be new but it doesn't feel like it. This city made you. This city is every cell in your dilapidated body, is every breath in your trembling mind, is every answer in your foully constructed illness.

It seems ridiculous in its simplicity, but isn't that always the way? When we find the answers, we realize we had them with us all along.

This city is the blood that courses through your veins. You have not been, without it.

And now you are, again.