good night, good night, wherever you are sleeping

It's easy to get distracted here. There's the arm-length tall hefeweizens at bars in the village, tiny bookstores with cold green floors and an employee that looks like Harriet the Spy (as an adult, that is), the glorious cold that came rushing in today, sending the neighborhood kittens into the half-burnt church. There are poetry readings and work of course and coffee with friends from another lifetime, when I was someone who never thought they'd return to the U.S., that they'd always live by the sea in Morocco. In red shoes, eating peppermint patties and drinking hot cider, I find myself wishing for some omniscient narrator who can tell me as nice (and as vague as that word entails) as life is right now, it will get better. That I'll wake up exactly where I want to be, which is somewhere far from the easy grit of this city. Where I can be completely alone, watching the stars' old light on some spot on the horizon, once again an unknown entity to all.

I'm writing you now just to see if you're better

The chill in the air has settled in, finally, and songs about leaves waft from doorways, ours included. A man with a tambourine groans as he sits and stays put at the bottom of the subway stairs. People look to see if there's a place to give him money, but seeing none, they move on, brushing raindrops from bulky gray sweatshirts. And the man shakes his tambourine and the woman selling water ice doesn't show up to the station anymore and I'm drinking tea from red tin containers and football (football football, not soccer) is played in Irish bars. It's autumn in New York.
Has it really been two years since I first moved here, since I would get lost on the subway and end up somewhere where a man from Ghana would give me free chips and tell me how my wallet looked like it was from his country, which he misses but will probably never see again.
Our apartment is cold, which gives me ample opportunity to light as many candles as I want, and the light bounces off his brown sweater and my red dress and, after reverberating off ceiling corners, it zeroes in on us again, making us seem almost ageless, and in this moment, I am happy. Happy fall, friends.