Would Be Enough

How beautiful a September Saturday in New York, all soft sunshine and gentle breezes. The children laughed and danced with aged hardcore punks in the old park, I found pictures today from my first life in the city: the Domino factory still standing, the Brooklyn side of the East River still bombed out brick decay, the downtown skyline so low in the years in between; the Empire State looking exactly the same, the bridges steadfast and unrelenting, taxicabs on a street corner the most reliable fixture in your life. The bartender gives us free drinks, everything's a laugh. I forget how the city has changed even under my watchful eye, but perhaps the same could be said for me. I am not the girl who first came here, all home knit leg warmers and fear of the world. You are not who you were when you first set foot in this river, everything changes.

There's a kernel in your chest, though, which has whispered the same truth to you for all the years of your life. It whispered when the world around you was loud and you heard nothing, it whispered when you stepped away into a quiet spot and begged to hear it, it whispered when you took wrong turns and couldn't see yourself for all the road blocks. If you sit real still, just for a moment, and let your ears listen, you'll still hear a truth so sweet it'll break your heart. That is who you are. No river can wash that away.