Broadway Lafayette

You land late, much later than planned and the last smoggy peaches fade out of the horizon as your plane crawls on the runway. It is late, so late when you leave the terminal and the car share is ten percent off but you drag your beat up suitcase to the subway regardless. You need the city to rub up against you, for the ragged ten p.m. crowd to hold you through quiet Queens, through downtown Brooklyn, you stand sweating on the platform waiting for a connection and recognize every single strangers face as home. New York my sweet heart, America you great unfinished symphony, I am tired and scared and as lost as I've ever been and here you are, waiting on a stuffy platform under the earth, painting me in your relentless grime to look like one of your own, the tall man with the short afro making eyes at me do you think he looks at me and recognizes me as home too, how do I tell him?

I stepped off at Broadway Lafayette street around midnight, Houston street quiet on a Thursday and all the tourists tucked safely in their beds. I rolled a cigarette and watched its smoke dance along the rabbled walls of the Bowery as my suitcase and I made our way home. Home. The plants in the window have died and I think one less thing to tether you, but the truth is nothing you own comes with chains. You are light as a feather, you are free to drag that god damned suitcase to the ends of the earth, because once you let a place make a home of itself to you, you will never truly leave. I'm sorry I veer off track sometimes, my sweet heart, but no matter.

I find my way back in the end.