Schlep

Returns to New York are just as sweet, every time. A skyline appears, a smile across my lips, something vibrates and you cannot put your finger on it -- or perhaps you do not want to for fear the magic breaks when you put it in a box. His outline appears at the end of an escalator, you know the silhouette too well to miss it. Even Penn Station has a sweet comfort to it.

Life is hard, and long, and lonely, the heart lives by breaking, lives and lives by bleeding into streets and strangers, this is how we grow. We nursed a short beer over conversations that need a year, and you wonder, where will I be a year from now? The question seems full of potential, or dread, depending on where you stand.

Today I stand on a streetcorner in Manhattan.

Potential ain't the half of it.