A Love Letter;

She was in love with the skyline. Every tower and point and crevice was committed to her brain. She breathed the air in, her steps pumped in time with the heart beat of the sidewalk. The breeze fell over her, she fell into the breeze. Every skyscraper and park and tree and person created her. She loved that city because it had raised her and it knew her so well.

It was her cushion, it was her backbone. It supported her, it would never change. She would memorize the cracks in the sidewalk before her city would disappoint her. She was enamored with the traditions the city observed every year—it was a comfort to live a life full of history and memory and happiness. She had not missed a single tree lighting since she was four, she always went window shopping at Christmas time and loved doing random things like watching the toy boat races in the park. She had many traditions of her own, like the walk she took from her apartment to the little Strand kiosk at the edge of the park. She remembered her dad spreading out a blanket in the Great Lawn and reading her picture books. There were so many trips with her mom to meet her dad for lunch. Great long subway rides, exaggerated in her memory, when often times on the way back her eyes would flutter shut with the intonations of “Stand Clear of the Closing Doors.”

As she grew older, the city seemed less of a magical mystery guided by her parents and more like an unexplored land. It belonged to her now, not only to her mom and dad, and she depended on it. She was the one sailing the streets in search of life. She was scouring the city for treasures unknown. She dug up books and music and food. She discovered people that hurt her and people she never wanted to be a part from. She was the queen of this city, she learned more than anyone or anything had ever taught her. She fell in love that year; not with a man but with a place. Her tie, her connection to the invisible forces of the city was mighty and impenetrable. Perhaps people and interests would come and go, but this would never change.

She loved the city because it was always there when she woke up in the morning. She loved the city because she could walk down the street alongside a Hindu man and exchange smiles as he walked his daughter to school. She loved the city because she could eat the same breakfast at the same café every day and the waiters would know her, or she could eat a hundred different breakfasts at a hundred different little cafes if she really wanted. It was a city with a pulse. There was always something happening—every window she walked by represented a different story. This family is breaking up, this woman is feeding yet another cat, this woman is going to try to talk to her brother for the first time in years. She could never know them all, but she imagined all of their secrets and whispered them as she passed them in the street.

In a city of eight million strangers, she never felt alone. In a city of thousands of buildings, she felt like each was her home. In a city of untold stories, her story was her own.