The lights fascinate them like there is no tomorrow-

Perhaps it is because

For them,

There isn't.

New York vacations drop like the New Year's Ball,

Exciting new beginnings,

In the summer, the fall, the spring-

Perhaps that is why

Winter

Is my favorite season.

Tourists wear their clothes like proclamations,

Inspired by the neon pinks, blues, whites, yellows of Times Square-

Perhaps that explains

Why New Yorkers

Only where black.

In the city that never sleeps,

We stalk like shadows in the night,

Slinking our way to work as they shimmy their ways across disco floors

Desperate to make the most of their spare taste of city life.

Their tongues loll like thirsted dogs,

Begging for a sip-

We know not to drink from city fountains,

Because New York is always in with the new,

But poison never gets old.

Have these blaring lights blinded me,

Or torn open my eyes?

I am proud of my city,

But I am also friends with the men in the alleyways

And the women on the streets

And they have told me that New York talks shit about them behind their backs

So what am I to do

But look at my city without betrayal?

"If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere," they chime,

But the only thing they have to make is their flight back home.

They will not stay for the Winter

When the cries of the hungry fill the streets

And the sirens of ambulances

Are the only thing

That warms the air.

If I tell someone I am from New York,

They try to tell it back to me-

"Like, real-real New York,

Like, the city-city New York,

Like, Manhattan-Macy's-Times Square-Central Park-Trump Tower-Fifth Avenue-Empire State Building-China Town-Little Italy New York?"

As if they doubt people live there

For more than just the weekend.

Yes, I am from New York,

And I have lived there for 1,785 weekends,

And I have lived there for 30,345 days,

And I have walked the streets you only take taxis down

And I have shaken hands with the people you wince away from when they come too close,

And I have seen those blaring lights every day on the way to school

And I have seen people throw themselves into the Hudson river

Because they dared to make a holiday into a lifestyle

Only to find they couldn't meet the rent on their life.

The lights fascinate them like there is no tomorrow-

Perhaps it is because

For them,

There isn't.

Yet for the 8.5 million of us who will pick up their litter Monday morning,

After their souvenir-stocked suitcases stuff their planes

And the air thereafter,

We will suck up our sorrow when it begins to lap at our heels,

Look to the Freedom Tower and sigh,

"Well,

At least there is always tomorrow."