here

July 2019

Here is the girl, on top of the world. From Brooklyn Bridge, she stares out at the famed Manhattan skyline, the familiar spire of Freedom Tower sticking out from the jigsaw puzzle of brick and liberty that is New York. The wind, rolling steadily off of the North Atlantic, whispers through her hair, sending strands of it flying behind her head as if it’s her own iconoclastic flag. Her hands grip the railings of the bridge as another train thunders past—she doesn’t notice them any more—its deafening clatter falling into a strange harmony with the horns in the distance, the shouts down below. She is home. Here is a place where North and South don’t need to exist—there is uptown, downtown, and the outlying islands; they are all that is needed to fall into place as her city, as the concrete jungle that she swings through day after day.

Here is the railing, sitting peacefully under her resting hands as she watches the sun in her peripherals, drenching the town in gold. The rays of light themselves looked as if they had been spun from materials stolen straight from the stretching Silk Road that lay halfway across the world. Perhaps they had been, for this was a city where you really could fly from China to Italy in a matter of insignificant footsteps, striding from streets of baking dough and spaghetti and laughter, to winding roads of shumai and stir-fry and clamouring for the sweetest lychee left on the rack. She smiles to herself as another car honks its way through the traffic, far below, noting carefully how persistently the sun shines, contrasting regally to the darkening clouds in the distance. The sky seems to have cracked where gold meets black, misty horizons warning her of the incoming storm. Where else, though, would she rather be, even when that rain is spitting down at her? Where else could she be other than pressed to the window of her cluttered apartment, watching the sky fall down onto the blurred street lights below? 

Here is the sunlight, drawing the girl back into reality as it reflects off the East River, blotting her vision for that fractional moment in time where nothing can be seen but the eternal light of the dying star. She watches a boat pierce through the water’s skin beneath her, the engine faint but audible as a line of salty froth trails behind it. Everyone in this city, she realises, has a story. They all come from somewhere—each of the nine million people that walk these streets have an entire life, worthy of novels, plays, films perhaps—and that is beautiful. For a moment, she is trapped in the act of lacing through each page of her own story; a needle into the very fabric of time, as New York breathes around her. Above, a helicopter swoops past, the droning whirr of its rotors casting her eyes upwards towards the battling sky. The sun fights now with the clouds, half of it hidden by the dense tenebrosity of the incoming tempest, drowning in an invisible sea. 

Here is the rain, striking the area just above her eyebrow, as she reluctantly turns away from the age-old railing—she knows that New York does not do things by half, and that the coming storm will not hesitate to permeate every inch of her that is exposed to the open air. She begins to walk, the drizzle tapping at her back, until the clouds are done playing their game and she is dancing through the downpour as the world walks by. Thunder cracks above her head, splitting the city sky, the lightning disappearing behind the Empire State as the rain beats down. Here, as soaking as if she’d dived into the ocean, surrounded by black umbrellas and grey clothes and darkened cars, she is happy. Stopping for a moment, the girl stares up at the sky again, shutting her wandering eyes, letting the water run down her face—as free as her, in this city of nothing but dreams, and dreams, and dreams.

Here is the darkness, surrounding the plane as tears streak down the girl’s face, ceaseless as the rain that cascades down the aeroplane windows. The lights of the airport are blurred through the downpour, New York City barely even a silhouette in the mist. Goodbye, she whispers, as she glances over at her brother, who looks briefly back. His eyes aren’t sad. For a pitiful, jealous moment, the girl is angry. Why doesn’t he have to be sad? She stares out into the black night of the one place that had felt like home for so, so long—and she cries. Her shoulders shake with the sobs of lost eternities as the vehicle starts to move, beginning the final, excruciating journey away from her concrete jungle. Violent, flashing thoughts—(of bridges and dancers and subways and courage and home)—blind her, so intensely that her eyes clamp shut, clenching until white sparks dance in front of her eyelids. Goodbye. She whispers the word, over and over, until it sounds foreign as it rolls off her tongue, her head pressed to the seat by the force of the plane as it begins its takeoff into the terrifying uncertainty of nightfall.