fire escapes and times square

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i was standing in a hotel window in times square, watching billboards change and cast a neon glare across the wall, waiting for the richard rodgers theater to shut their marquee lighting off. i was silent, phone long since turned off and abandoned in the mess that were bedsheets. i realized in that moment- there are a million different people. walking across 42nd, crossing to the starbucks that had been closed for sixteen minutes on 43rd, singing down near the 24 hour mcdonalds open next to the theater where an american in paris was playing, a melody of rent and chicago songs. i was just the human sitting on the windowsill in hotel room three hundred and one, waiting for the theater marquees to shut down.

it was so quiet...i could breathe. i wasn't me, i wasn't my anxiety, i was just...breathing. i was just existing. i was watching, waiting, observing, falling in love with midtown manhattan. i wasn't thinking. i wasn't struggling.

it was just me. me, manhattan, the richard rodgers theater's marquees, and a million different people all existing at the same time.

~

samantha

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