I want to live differently

Slowing down as I grow up

New York City, by the author.

It’s morning in Manhattan. I’m sitting in an apartment, drinking coffee, eating toast and talking. I like this. The laughter, the conversation, the sounds of the street outside — cars honking and wind blowing — and I listen.

Toast crunches, the newspaper turns, paper rustles like dead leaves blowing in an autumn wind. My journal rests on the pillow beside me. I scribble poetry.

We’re all doing our own activity: crocheting, a crossword, scribbling notes; we sip coffee — one cup, then another — no music, no TV, just the sounds of our crafts and the dog who rests in the nook of the fireplace.

A comment or a question arises, a word to oneself.

Beyond the window I glimpse windows into other rooms, like me, looking out to you — grey and white, white and blue, stone and brick and metal.

City life.

Reaching through the glass pane are shadows of lost innocence, echoes of our pleas. The page, the pillow, the message of the eyes, I see more than boxed up rooms, but evanescent dreams.

Time weaves. I’m sitting in the silence. Through me flows the river of potential. And what is potential? Innocence burned by the spark of experience, rekindled as wisdom.