I walk through the streets. My city. My people: the lost, the annoyed, the angry, the oblivious. We’re all going somewhere and everyone else is in the way.

I weave, I thread my way through to get underground: entranced sightseers, daring teenagers, nurses off double shifts, exquisitely tailored bros. All in my way. They stand between my city and our home.

Because the city belongs only to me, it is mine. The city is a proud, lonely place. it’s for cutting teeth and harsh wind tunnels and sweaty piles of garbage. It’s for drunken wild moon nights and sober blistering days in the park. It is not for friends or for lovers. It is not for families. It is for your soul only. It is for your very own sense of brutality and kindness.

But, our home, our home belongs to all of us. It’s where I can breathe and be held. Where I can find rest. It’s where I can be touched with warmth, by his mischievous smile when he tells a lie, her pout when I refuse to play the guitar with her, and of course you: where there is no me, there is only us and ours.

And between my city and our home they all crowd in my way: miserable waiting on the corner, miserable crossing the street, miserable in the stairways, the tunnels, miserable on the train, miserable between seats. Misery sitting next to me.

I wish I could tell them, lean over and whisper into their ear, I know, I know why you are the way you are: my city doesn’t love you and you don’t have a home.