If You Only Had Time

The West Village rests. For one day, the streets are empty, the air is still. There's no traffic on 7th avenue, no deranged monologues along Cornelia Street, no pretense on Bleecker. A post-apocalyptic story amuses itself into existence in my head from a windy perch on the Christopher Street pier (do you remember, when we first came here, how different the west side was then and they had only barely swept the syringes off the docks?) while sunset dances across the monoliths. Again, again your heart grows beyond itself, the extended silence settles piles of words like snowflakes along your insides, I stumble sometimes, there's no denying it, but in the end the path always lies clear. Stick to your work, he says after I trip on ghosts of my own making, and he couldn't be more right. Stick to your work, let it prove your points to yourself. When I was seven I told my father I was going to be a writer and he said yes, I think so. The fire doesn't leave you just because you sleep well at night.

Besides, isn't it one-thirty and you're up?