I finish my coffee as warm shadows stretch out on the streets, enlivened by the early September sun.

I read a Times piece and prepare to go out. My superintendant is talking with a delivery man at the door. He wishes me a nice day as I walk past him towards Lexington.

People seem to surge from the city’s womb, hurled from subway stations and office buildings, nameless and yet so close of one another — for they are not white or black, they are not lawyers or waiters, they are not natives or immigrants, but they are New Yorkers.

This is about the center of the world, of all the worlds, metal and brownstone canyons, gridlocked streets and decayed projects, about falling towers and rising unity.

Kids carrying food boxes down cellars, suits waiting to cross the street and speaking on their cell phones, cooks smoking cigarettes on the curb —

I see Tyrone, a homeless man I come across almost every day, sat on a bench near the Flatiron Building. He waves at me and I sit with him. He takes a long sip of flavored water then hands me the bottle.

I drink and we both smile quietly. The floor sometimes shakes when trains enter the station under our feet.

“The whole city is buried underground. Rats running in tunnels, that’s what we are. Rats in tunnels.”

Tyrone raises his head and closes his eyes. Someone yells at someone else and another train leaves beneath us.

“You’re going to miss the city when you’re gone. All the noise and the crazies and the hassles. You’ll miss it.”

I keep silent. A light breeze rushes across the trees of Madison Square Park, swirling leaves around.

“Where are you going anyway?” the homeless asks.

“Everywhere from coast to coast.”

“And where else are you going to find a good pizza or a real bagel? You’ll wake up one morning in a San Francisco hotel and you’ll think what the hell am I doing here? Where are my delis and my favorite bums?”

“I know I’ll miss it.”

“You bet you will. So sad, man.”

We look at people passing by with morning papers in their hands.

“I would freak out if I had to leave the city.”