It feels different this time, she says as she peers into your empty room. It’s like you’re really leaving. She’s not wrong. A little suitcase stands by the door, how could it possibly contain all the life I’ll need from now until winter? I check in on a flight with no return ticket. There is some sort of penance being paid, but it’s not clear what for. Five years ago today I returned to this place and it still seems like a dream, every day still feels like a honeymoon and maybe that’s what love is, you’re getting closer.
New York woke me in sunshine this morning, beautiful crisp September sunshine the kind that breathes in your lungs for you. My steps were light towards the river, smiling at strangers and reveling in one last good run before departure. At the Williamsburg bridge, a man climbed the cables and said he had nothing worth living for, so what harm would it do to stop. The tears surprised me, the way my breath forgot its timetable, here we are on the ground with our frivolous lives and one person a few hundred feet away is trying to end his. The tennis courts remained busy. The city giveth, the city taketh away. This moment is not about me, I stammer over the phone line, but somehow it was all of us: that life is fragile, and beautiful, and finite, and you owe it to the Universe to spend yours better than you thought you deserved. Five years ago today I stepped onto a red-eye flight and thought I had bought myself just another few moments of magic, how could I know I had given myself the world? I walked through the West Village later with a song in my step, with a beat in my heart, with the reminder that distance makes your blood boil and the flowers bloom, I do not fear this departure because it is only an adventure, and adventures were made for the fearless.
I go to bed early, set my alarms for dawn, sleep a dreamless sleep.
What dreams could I have?
I am here.
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