summer in the city

Spring was joyful but short-lived. Now the air is like dirty bathwater and there's no easy place to go swimming. It smells like rot and exhaust and there's always some guy on a jackhammer outside my window in the morning. On the subway, I practice careful breathing. Sandwiched between so many damp bodies, the air is sick with the sweat of multiple ages and genders and ethnicities. The other day on the bus, a short man standing next to me looked down and inadvertently wiped his sweaty, bald head on my arm. Not wanting to embarrass him, and not having anything with which to clean myself, I let this stranger's sweat dry on my body.

And still, I am so glad to be back. New York! I spend my free time puttering around my new apartment, running my hands on the windowsills, breathing into my little potted plants. Buying lamps and growing roots, slamming them into the ground. home home home home home home. Then at night, practicing guitar up on the roof where it's cool, the east river and all of Manhattan on my left, the endless brownstones of Brooklyn on my right, and all is well.

I don't know really know why I love this stinky, ugly city so much. If I was in LA, I'd be at the beach right now. Or swimming in my pool, instead of listening to my heart go thump thump on a tar rooftop in Greenpoint.

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