Tuesday, October 30, 2012

A Letter To New York

I read this in New York on the 19th of March this year at the start of a book signing/reading.

I hope you are all safe.


Dear New York, 

You are in your subways, where your earbuds whisper softly to each other. Where you are rocked to sleep, gently as the trains move, and you are part of some great everyone. So you are a city that walks on top of another city, a city of people dreaming, you put your foot down on dreams when you cross the street, your children play, on dreams. You go to work each day, on layers of moving dreams. You are pieces of life from subway to skyscraper. And I wish you could hear the way your voices sing like I hear them, but you can't anymore than I can hear what my voice sounds like. None of us have accents inside our heads. Our voices and words are water and tasteless and colourless because of how much of them we drink. 

Only other people can hear what we sound like. Tonight, thank you for being those other people New York. 

 Sincerely, 

 Me

5 comments:

ams said...

and thank you for being that someone..

Anonymous said...

As a New Yorker, this is what I needed to read, thank you <3

tharangni said...

beautiful!

Caitlin Maloney said...

Thank you <3

Anonymous said...

reminds me of the sleeping city in gaiman's Sandman