The weather forecast frightens for no reason, the early evening is blissfully mild, and a gentle breeze sings through the crooked streets downtown. I started walking, aimlessly, because the best kind of walk is the one that doesn't tell you your goal until it is in you. By the time I reached Chinatown, smelling of fish in the late summer if course, twilight had laid a deep yellow hue across the bricks and the gingko trees; everything seemed silent. I curved under the Brooklyn bridge and veered back north, narrowly avoiding the throngs of classes and tourists making their rounds. Zig-zagged through the outer edges of an unknown neighborhood before reaching Delancey just at dusk. I climbed the Williamsburg bridge slowly, painstakingly, it is like one long slope that never ends, a mountain in miniature, and the sky grew dark. The M train passed, shaking the foundations and offering just a moment's glimpse at the lives of others, like watching them in a fish bowl, or like walking past a warmly lit house in winter.
There's a small section in the middle of the bridge where the bike lanes and pedestrian lanes meet, a short tunnel for going to the north side and staring out over the Manhattan skyline. I stood there in a trance, there's no telling for how long. A group of graffiti artists pulled up, cracked open cans of beer and discussed the climb. A J train crept by slowly. I stared at the skyline, at my beautiful home twinkling in the near distance, so close I could touch it. So close I could belong. My legs were tired, my feet, my head, my skin. A police car pulled up to talk to the graffiti kids. I wanted to protect them, somehow, but in the end the cop just fined them and laughed like he wanted to join.
I felt my love for the city spread again into my sad limbs, felt it wet my eyes even though I tried to hold it back. My heart filled with gratitude.
Carried me back home again.
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