To Tell Them To

4 a.m. and New York City lies quiet. The street corner is dark, a dark I haven't seen in weeks. I sit in the window, unable to sleep, and my head keeps whispering Home, home, home. I forget I have ever been anywhere else, that I have ever wanted to.

Later, on the subway, seeing again people of every skin, of every way, I realized my center of gravity had sunk into the ground, my breaths slowed. Like I had been untethered, like I had been drifting off into space for a while but had returned to dock now. Home, home home. A heat wave rolls across the avenues, it makes pearls of sweat roll down my neck, but it can't touch me. Nothing can.

On these steaming, dirty, noisy, impossible streets, I am invincible.