The Excess

This view.. This city.. I just can't... He said in unbelieving awe. His first time in New York, and here he was at the top of the Brooklyn factory that showed him every building block of the city. The day had been sweltering, but the sunset brought cool winds and the light that made everything glow. 

It's like I get high off their fumes, she said, like I'm addicted to the feeling of seeing New York for the very first time and I can't get enough. There were tears in her eyes now, and I knew just what she meant. I still remember sitting in that SuperShuttle, eight years ago soon, and we dropped another group off near the David Letterman marquee as we made our way to 50th and 1st. Still remember the mad dash to the Lexington apartment and the view of the Empire State Building from the terrace. How impossible it seemed that this city really existed, that we were really there. All these years later, she whispered, and I still haven't taken enough pictures of this skyline. No filter can do justice to what actually seeing it is like. 

They pack their bags now, count down days. Tell themselves they will be back, time and again, and that the city will be here when they do. It just seems like my dream was to come here and live this exact life, and where does one go from that? How does one leave that?

We sat silently in the approaching dusk. Midtown twinkled across the water. I was grateful then that it was not me leaving, that those trains would keep rocking over the Williamsburg bridge and the skyscrapers keep humming in my periphery. The newcomer brought up his wife to see this strange new world they'd uncovered. We drank our beers in silence. There's no doing this picture justice.