The bike weaved through late afternoon traffic, due west, bright sunshine and saucer magnolias billowing out from brick walls and townhouse stoops. I rode to the end of the island, to that bric-a-brac collection of cobblestone and factory wall that is being white washed and moneyed by the day. At the end of the block, right before the landfill dips into the Hudson river, I knocked on a steel door, and when I turned around, my hand held the keys to a whole new world, if only literally.
It was after sunset by the time I reached the apartment, the last waves of pink twilight at the end of the street, stars rising over Brooklyn. I turned the lights off, walked around the leaning wood floor, whispered introductions into the exposed brick wall. From the kichen window, between stacks of tenement buildings, a sliver of Tompkins Square Park appears; from the bedroom, a few tall spires from Brooklyn. At every turn, deep blue sky and budding trees, with every breath, a strange new voice, unknown and yet familiar.
New York, honey, I have spent a lifetime looking for you.
You were always the world I was hoping to find.
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