NYC

The streets were bright and alive, much larger than in previous months. The air, was filled with so much heat you could practically see it. The humidity was at an all-time high which caused the streets to smell like the trash from the night before. The little scraps of confetti from the new year still haven’t been picked up, as if the city didn’t care about this part of itself anymore. The sky, was so blue; yet so filled with the smog and smoke from the old men who would smoke on the side of the street. When they coughed the air filled with more smoke and black than the minutes before. 

Each individual on the street is so unknown—the woman whose bag is filled with produce from the shops on Grand. The teenager going to the park holding a basketball and egg waffles from the cart on Canal Street, the cart trying to replicate the taste they lost so many years ago. The little boy and little girl whose parents are always working yet still care and provide so much. The man whose family moved away so many years ago still keeps their photos in his wallet so they’ll always remain with him. Each story is so different from the last, all interconnected, intertwined, each part of the other.

The man’s family, was so close to him yet so far away. He goes about every day hoping, and wishing for something to happen for someone to call, write, text, or email but nothing. His family moved on without him, leaving him to start their lives. He hopes for something he can’t have, something so out of reach yet so easy to see. Everyone you see wishes for something, something so out of reach yet so easy to find, something they’re so close to having but just can’t and they hope and pray for a different life, one where they all have what they want. Yet they know they can’t. The woman whose bag is filled with produce misses her husband who died so many years ago, but somehow she still looks for him on those crowded streets. The teenager who misses his sister at college but she’ll never come back now knowing what the city has turned into but he still looks for her when he visits that cart. The little boy and little girl who always envy the families they see, hoping they’ll get that one day. Hoping they’re parents will have what they need to work less and spend more time with them. 

And here you stand, watching all these people go about their lives, live them to the fullest or at least try for everything that they need to truly live them is so slightly out of their reach they can’t truly live their lives. At the back of their minds they all want something they’ll never have and that’s what makes them humans, and people in this city. But here I stand, someone who also wants what I can’t have. To live closer to my family, hoping that’ll make me more connected to my culture somehow, to know my grandfather who died a year before I was born because if I knew him i’d know why my family says I act like him, to be closer to all these people I grew up with but I truly don’t know but somehow miss. And here everyone stands, going about their day, living their life, while something inside them still craves more. And maybe that’s what makes us human, the urge and desire yet to never be satisfied.