Tip. Toe.

The monster curls its tail and retreats, you try to remember if this is what it feels like to return to the living, if this is how it used to be when you breathed all on your own, but it's too long ago now, you don't dare believe the lightness in your lungs, the ease of your smile. Are we out of the woods? It seems too good to be true. You go to the Monday bar on a Tuesday, stare at the patrons because they are not the same, like taking a later train on your morning commute and finding your regulars replaced by aliens. 

You look at apartment listings and wonder who you'd be in Flatbush. Somehow nothing scares you now like it used to. Somehow you dug your nails into New York, and it will never be rid of you completely, its grime coursing through your veins now, you are impervious to its abandonment. The bartender says if he gets re-elected I may go back home, but you both know the words are empty, this is home, it's too hard to explain to people who have never breathed it. You both stuck it out at this little bar on 5th street, you both waded through eons of New York to get to this point and remain, it's only life if you refuse to see its magic. 

When you are ready for it, the fear is rendered mute.
The Universe rewards those who keep going.