We are always, always mortal

age: 24

location: New York City

This is not a story of what I want to do because I’ve done it. This is not a story about who I am or what I am because I am not. This is a story about the stillness of the city at night, when you catch it at the precise moment where the air is as fragile as the light from the light posts, and the streets are as asleep as the sun, as asleep as the many that lie in their bed without enough energy to weep anymore but just to close their eyes.

I find myself caught in this moment not as much I would like. But whenever I am, I have to tiptoe through the midnight scene just as a boy does when he gets up and leaves the family he has created in search of a new thrill. And those lucky few that have eyes opened enough to catch the city’s state tiptoe too. No one wants to be responsible for interrupting a baby’s rest. No one wants to let a moment become a memory.

Which is why I don’t know if others realize it when they step out onto the dim lit pavement. When their drunken chatter emerges. When smoke rises up from the cigarette they just lit. I had just witnessed a how alive street sign could be, how poetic the doors of closed storefronts are, and how beautiful it is when one can feel the world start to spin less and less to where they can keep up with it. I can’t spend the rest of my life trying to keep up with it. I can only spend it searching for that moment again.