The dive bar bartender connects with you over your shirt, as it calls back to a lower east side of yore: old New York recognizes old New York. By the time you’re making your way home, reeling north along a bubbling late summer city, your brain is tipsy and your heart cold. This is part of the deal, but you do not owe anyone anything but yourself. And the city, perhaps, you owe the city everything.
When you wake, the slightest memory of a hangover rests across your temples, but the storm is coming, so you make your way out to the river before the torrent. Monday morning quiet and peacefully gray, the overcast sky fading imperceptibly into the east river. The precipice is far away again, the ground underneath you steady. You remind yourself that you know this ebb and flow. Stand back up, brush yourself off.
Keep going.
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