Streets Seen from Above

Another Summer Night in New York

I keep staring at the shadows on the ceiling. I listen to my AC and try to focus on the white noise.

I get up and drink a glass of water in the kitchen. I take a few sips and empty the rest of the glass on my neck. I grab an ice cube in the freezer and let it melt in my hand.

I slide the window up and sit on the fire escape, in the summer heat. I count the cabs.

Friends coming out of bars, couples holding hands, tourists looking up and walking back, kids running away from their parents, street sweepers picking up empty bottles and homeless people picking empty bottles from street sweepers, suits waiting for their bus, alarms going off —

I raise my eyes to the half-dark sky while a plane flies over the sleepless streets, landing gears down, silently.

I read sentences written in a hurry on a notepad, underlined once or twice, some encircled, some boxed.

The way the pen rolls on the paper.

Canarsie teens shouting hip-hop rhymes in SUVs and Astoria cops ending their shifts, pretzel vendors dragging their carts away, Jersey girls drinking iced-tea, Upper East Siders rushing toward Lincolns, smells of gyros and Pad Thai, overflowing trash cans —

I slip back into the apartment and write a few lines.

I stop to get another ice cube. I unhook my surfboard from behind the sofa and lie down on it, eyes wide open.

More sirens, more voices and more steps on the sidewalks, more planes, more trains, more lights and more cameras flashes, more strangers talking to other strangers, and always the same shadows on the ceiling, the same streaks, the same blinds, the same —