Her Umbrella did What it's Owner Could Never Do

She sits in the subway. The train moves along like a bug that won't die. And it's no surprise to her that people say that the city makes you hard. The city IS hard. Hard and cold steel surround her and everyone else. The cobwebs are scaffolding. The sound of trees blowing in the wind is the sound of cabs whizzing by her at ungodly speeds. Trees are replaced by buildings, tall and proud and filled with the anonymity that she finds peaceful.

It makes you hard. But it doesn't make you dead.

At night, sometimes, she swears she can see the city exhale.

And she looks at the eyes of a child she once knew. It's amazing how quickly they grow. They grow and they learn and they don't recognize her anymore and that's the way that it should be and the way that it will always be because you have to leave the part where you leaned on others behind in order to realize that you can stand on your own.

It doesn't help her feel less isolated, though.

Isolation. A blessing and a curse to a girl like her.

The city offers her a comfort in its indifference. So many faces pass by her like the tracks that flash and streak around her on the train. She is just another face to them, as well. And there's a certain camaraderie in it all, a quiet understanding that her face will pass from their mind as quickly as theirs pass from hers, and it's all just part of the tapestry of this manmade nature that is Manhattan.

She thinks about a year ago--lost in kisses and caresses and the sheer exhilaration of being infatuated. And how long ago that seems, and yet how freshly she can still recall it. Do all loves stay with you like this, she thinks to herself. Or is she just one of those people who can cling to a memory so closely that it becomes her comfort blanket. She lays it on herself as summer truly dies and she curls up in her bed, and the cold air that has descended has taken the pain and heat of summer away. She doesn't miss him per se; in fact, she's pretty sure she doesn't miss him at all. She'd think she missed infatuation, but it's still a sentiment most familiar. She's always in love. And always alone. So she doesn't miss him, but she misses something. She's missed something.

She thinks that he looks like an angel when he sleeps. But she doesn't mean the one who just passed through her mind. Perhaps the new one whose kisses make her weak in the knees but whose distaste for her socks her in the gut. And then she wonders what "he" she is referring to at all. Maybe they all look like angels when they're sleeping. They're devils to her in the day; but at night, they are calm and they are warm and they do not hurt her the way that they do as the light does when morning comes.

The light is painful and sharp, but the light is fading in the city and she rises from the subway like a phoenix and steps out into the cool dusk and makes her way through her steel forest.

She sighs. And pulls her jacket a little closer to her chest. She's never one to leave her heart exposed. Not for long, anyway.