A New York Window

My room is, was, so tiny...just big enough for a bed...just big enough for a desk, just big enough. But I have windows. I’m just learning the importance of windows.

I wondered how it was that I decided to come to a school that’s got 19 girls for every guy. How will I find Mr. Right in Ms. Rightville? Sometimes I see beautiful men…most are on the street, many have their arms around other beautiful people. And I walk by thinking how beautiful that is.

But I’ve seen this guy around my building here and there and I thought, wow, there is a beautiful man. A few weeks later, I saw him coming off the elevator as I went in—he was with a girl and they walked down the hall towards his mysterious apartment. As the elevator doors hesitated to close, I watched their backs walk away together and I sank against the elevator walls feeling defeated. She won, I thought, as the doors finally closed.

Then I saw him again, saying really nice things to the security guy at the front desk of our building, but I can’t remember his words. I was fumbling in my purse, trying to find my ID so I could scan in and attempting to listen to a friend nearby who was talking to me. But I was listening to the beautiful man who lived in my building conversing with the security guard. I started to stare as my hands dug in my purse. He saw me looking at him and my face said everything as our eyes met. I took them away as soon as it happened, knowing they said too much, threw them into the depths of my purse and hurriedly grabbed my ID card so I could rush to loneliness.

A week later I went downstairs to get my mail and he was standing in the path of the mailroom. I immediately tensed up but tried to keep my composure. He saw me and smiled. I gave him a grin, the best I could do under the intimidated pressure of being in the presence of a crush.

Back to my room…it’s so tiny but it has windows. I have two. One looks out onto a courtyard made of cement from 7 stories up. There are benches and chairs but really not that much is there. My other window faces other people’s windows. One is directly across from mine but the shades are almost always closed. A couple nights ago, while working on my computer, I paused from my studying and turned my head only to see a shirtless man standing in his room across the way. The window framed the bare chest and muscular back that paced the room. It was him! The beautiful boy I’d been seeing around and pining over all this time lived 20 feet away from me, our windows looked right into each other’s. I couldn’t believe the odds--in a 10 story apartment building with over 700 rooms and mostly girl tenants—my dream man lived directly across from me.

I watched him sit down at his computer in the humidity of the New York night. He ran his hands back and forth over his head thinking about what line to write next.

I couldn’t help myself from looking more. I grabbed a piece of paper, wanting so badly to reach out at that very moment, and wrote in large letters “H’ and “I”. I drew a smiley face and hung it up with a piece of tape against my window pain in the hopes he would look. I eventually went to sleep and the next morning I saw his blinds had closed, but his window was blank. The following day I checked off and on, for any signs of life, but only the blank, white sterile vinyl curtain looked back at me. Defeated, again.

I felt like an idiot and took down my unreciprocated “Hi! :)” sign. A few days later, I was in my kitchen and noticed something strange, a few windows down and across there was something on the glass. I ran to my room to get a better view and saw that he had written back! Taped onto his bedroom window was a sign that said, “Hi, sorry…” and on another window of his apartment following it was, “I’m late! :)”

I danced around my tiny room like a little girl on an endless ballroom floor.

I smiled all day.

Tonight I see his lights are on. I look up, without glasses and he is there standing, half hiding from the openness, peeking to see if I am looking, and I can’t see, but I see and he sees me… and I wave and he waves back and my heart is racing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

New York Lived--Month One

New York is a sea of places and faces and concrete buildings and horns swirling around me. Whirling around, I wonder, where am I going? So I pick up the pace and jump on the train that people from the industrial revolution thought our generation might respect. Little did the progressive engineers and laborers know how their posterity would treat their modern marvel. Rats scurry from track to hole amidst discarded diapers and coca colas and unsustainability, dodging the incoming D.

No time to fix any of it because we’re moving…onto to the next stop where twenty different people help a blind man upstairs and out onto the street. Smells change just as quick as our steps and men with nothing to loose let every beautiful woman know she is. Fences are everywhere and the chain links rushing minutes closer and closer together until all you can squeeze is a blink.

But the old Puerto Rican man and his friends steal time to dance in the street on Saturday evening, reminding me to slow down—that the city, she breathes; And every tree that calls this place home has become my hero—and sometimes I inhale and notice—every bee and bird that hack the solid ground despite the buried earth that’s beneath; And every child who plays amongst the towering structures and curious strangers gives me reason to do the same. Their songs are the gentle melodies that flow like golden rivers of light that glow brighter than that square of time.