Grus

Morning arrives early, but slow, I am pulled out of strange dreams like taffy, an enormous mansion and what can one do with so much old space, it sits as both a gift and a menace in the creaking space between my shoulder blades. Perhaps I was never a morning person. My client is already six hours ahead and well into a work week, as I sit staring at the late summer sky, missing my characters on the page. Mommy has to work, you scoff, as your to do list grows beneath your fingernails. It's not even going to get hot today. 

Unassuming Monday, unassuming last day of August, fourteen years ago I arrived bright eyed and unbelieving into this city and now look at me, tired and ragged but never happier. 

Do you hear me, New York? If you put all these knives in front of me again I'd still take them, so long as you held my hand like you have. I'd take every broken bone and every bruise, so long as you were still mine. Fourteen years is nothing. We have so much farther to go.