I woke up at 6:47 on Sunday for no reason. No alarm, no plan, just my body deciding it was done sleeping.
Instead of fighting it, I got dressed and left the apartment. And I discovered something New York keeps hidden from people who sleep in.
An empty 6 train on a Sunday morning is the closest this city gets to peace.
I had a whole car to myself. Just me and the golden light coming through the windows and the sound of the train being a train. No one performing. No one selling anything. No one's elbow in my ribs.
I rode it down and got off around Astor Place because I wanted a bacon egg and cheese, the official sacrament of a New York morning. There's a bodega near St. Marks where the guy toasts the roll properly and doesn't skimp on the salt-pepper-ketchup ritual.
Greenwich Village at 7:30am belongs to the dog walkers and the runners and the people quietly recovering from Saturday. The whole neighborhood was hungover and soft-edged and beautiful.
I sat in Washington Square Park and ate my sandwich while the fountain hadn't even turned on yet. A saxophone player set up early, testing notes. A pigeon watched me with genuine menace.
This is the New York I moved here for. Not the loud one. This quiet one, the one that only shows itself before the crowds wake up and reclaim it.
Back home, mornings were chaos. The pressure cooker whistling, my dad's news channel blasting, the kaamwali bai ringing the bell, everyone talking over everyone. I used to crave silence there.
Now I have all the silence I want and I sometimes miss the whistle of the cooker so much it aches.
But this particular Sunday, on this particular empty 6 train, I felt the rare thing. Contentment. Not the Instagram kind. The real, boring, quiet kind.
I stayed in the park until the fountain turned on. Then I went home and made chai and pretended, just for a second, that I could hear my mother in the kitchen.
Set the alarm early one Sunday. The empty train is worth it, I promise.
Love,