Tompkins Square Park

When you sit in one place, the world seems to just unfold around you. The sun remains constant, casting a spotlight onto the old wooden bench that you always seem to find yourself on. Its metal railings have rusted and its chestnut planks grown splintered. Little spiders and worms crawl between its slivered grain, the splintered wood that bears evidence of a past lover’s graffitied attempt at permanence. The bench is not yours, though it may as well be. Every time you come to the park, the park that you could find your way through blindfolded, the bench is empty for you. Reserved by chance, perhaps, but in any case it is yours. You sit on its worn down seat, rest your back on its rigid boards. You squirm your body in search of softness in all its hardness. It is all too familiar, yet every time you sit on that bench, there is newness in your surroundings.

One day you watch a top heavy baby waddle through lush blades of grass towards the open arms of her father as his eyes lock on yours. One day the guy from the smoke shop glides past on his skateboard, cigarette in hand while you wonder what his lush brown eyes would feel like looking into yours. One day a girl in a long skirt with wired headphones tilts her head to the sun as she walks past you, tears glimmering as they fall down her cheeks. One day a misty rain falls on your own cheek while a twenty-something pulls their jacket over their head in their best attempt at a make-shift umbrella. One day an unassuming man in an understated canvas work suit winks at you and suddenly the sting of discomfort penetrates the under layer of your skin.

And one day it is you that they watch, as you sit there alone in that all too familiar park.