There's a bodega on my corner in Washington Heights where the man behind the counter, Luis, has started making my coffee before I even ask. This, more than my lease or my subway card, is what tells me I live here now.
Sunday mornings belong to the bodega on my corner. It's not a decision anymore, it's a religion. I walk down in whatever I slept in, buy an overpriced everything bagel and a coffee, say hi to the bodega cat who has never once acknowledged my existence.
That cat is the most New York thing I know. Complete indifference. Total dignity. Owns the whole store and pays no rent. Honestly, goals.
I keep trying to make proper masala chai at home and failing. The cardamom's never right, the milk boils over, I get the ratio wrong every single time. My Nani made it in her sleep. I have a Fashion Design degree and cannot boil tea. The universe has jokes.
So the bodega coffee has become my compromise. It's not chai. It's not home. But Luis knows I take it light and sweet, and there's something in being known by even one person in a city of eight million.
Sunday mornings belong to the bodega on my corner because everything else about New York moves too fast. The weekdays are a blur of trains and deadlines and pretending I have it together. But Sunday, I get to be a regular. A neighbor. A person, not a hustle.
Today there was an old man buying lottery tickets, two kids fighting over a Takis bag, a woman in scrubs coming off a night shift looking like she'd seen God and been unimpressed. My people. My corner.
I took my coffee to the little stoop outside and watched Washington Heights wake up in the July heat, and I thought, I could stay here a long time.
Home isn't a place. It's the guy who knows your order.
Where's your corner?
Love,