West

The morning begins with a jolt, soon you're in an uptown waiting room calming a terrified face and hoping for good news. The sun is warm again and Queensborough Bridge is teeming with excitement: summer Friday. Pack your bag and move westward, back into that nook you know with your eyes closed, how nothing feels as much like home as this. One day this place will belong to someone else. Perhaps it will be yours, perpetually.

The weekend steams. People evaporate out of their apartments, the tiny morsels of green space filling up in an instant. I ran along familiar piers, to familiar views, but everything felt a hundred miles away underneath my pounding steps. A slow downward spiral circles your spine but you decide to cut it off before it speaks.

I haven't time for a slow descent into madness just now. It is summer.

I know I'll get to it eventually.