I stood up, because I needed to get in line to go home. The words tugged at me in that way that causes a struggle to pull my eyes off the page.

“I know now that when the loving, honest moment comes it should be seized, and spoken, because it may never come again. And unvoiced, unmoving, unlived in the things we declare form heart to heart, those true and real feelings wither and crumble in the remembering hand that tries too late to reach for them.”

- Shantaram

With swelling heart, I look out at the city that belongs to no one.
You are that city for me.

I bicycle along your highways, I tap dance down your sidewalks. I finger your starlit skies. I do cartwheels in the grassy roots of your parks and run my fingers through the branches of your flowering trees. I nestle my face into the hopeless romance you offer while tacitly shouldering the heartache you require me to bear- because, as our hearts staunchly believe, surely it will be worth it in the end. I photograph your sunsets and breathlessly awake before dawn to catch the way the sun rises across the buildings lining your horizon. I search for meaning in the silences and the pauses while also fervently abandoning myself to the noise and constant movement.

I lazily drift in and out of you, by train or by foot or by air. I watch as you fade into a chorus of lights in the distance, and with this you wink at me cleverly.

And, finally, willingly, when I return as I always do, I fold myself again into you.

"I felt empty: the kind of emptiness that’s sad but not distressed, pitying but not broken hearted, and damaged, somehow, but clearer and cleaner for it. And then I knew what it was, that emptiness: there’s a name for it, a word we use often without realizing the universe of peace that’s enfolded in it— free."

- Shantaram