Shuttle

Turn a corner and a perfect reflection of the Chrysler building glitters in the glass skyscraper across the street; it is a postcard, it is a cliché of New Yorkness and you fall for it with no reservations. Let your heels click-clack across the late-night quiet main floor of Grand Central Station and feel like you own it. How much smaller it gets in real life. The other day I rode the 6 train past my stop, past the following stops; I rode it all the way to the end and crossed the rails to take the next one back up to where I was supposed to be going. Standing on that rocking train felt too much like home, and I never wanted it to end. I walk crooked ways home through the West Village mazes. There is a certain, golden yellow light that hits the autumn trees in the Village and makes the whole neighborhood a quiet magic.

And these streets smell, all the time they smell of garbage and bleach and subway sweat and misery. And it is impossibly expensive to live here, and just when you begin to relax this city will find a way to kick you in the face. And there will come a day, or two, or 50, when you will doubt if it is worth all the sacrifice to live here, and if you couldn't have a better life elsewhere, safer, calmer, more reasonable according to the checklist.

But perhaps that's what love is. That year after year, through compromise and sacrifice and questioning your own sanity for staying in, there comes a moment, where you look up, and everything bathes in that magic golden glow, and that feeling rushes through your chest like you just fell in love for the first time all over again and every doubt was worth the wait.

I doubted.
I did.
But I can't for the life of me
remember why
now.