I went to DUMBO alone on Thursday evening, no plan, no company, just me and a chai in a paper cup and the urge to be somewhere with a view.
I took the F to York Street and walked down toward the water, past the cobblestones that ruin every pair of shoes I own, to the little beach at Brooklyn Bridge Park where you can sit on the rocks.
There's a spot right under the Manhattan Bridge where the whole Manhattan skyline lines up like it's posing for you. Everyone knows about it now, the tourists with the tripods, the couples doing engagement photos. DUMBO is not a secret.
But on a weekday at 7PM the crowd thins out and the light goes gold and pink and impossible, and for a while it's almost yours.
I used to be scared of doing things alone here. I thought a woman sitting by herself watching a sunset looked lonely. Sad, even. Something to be pitied.
Somewhere in the last two years that flipped. Now sitting alone in DUMBO with the bridge rumbling above me feels like the most luxurious thing I own. Nobody to perform for. Nobody asking what I'm thinking. Just me and Brooklyn and the FDR lights blinking on across the water.
A train rattled over the bridge and I thought about the fact that I chose this. This city, this evening, this exact rock. I moved here alone at twenty-two with two suitcases and my mother crying at the Ahmedabad airport. And now I sit in DUMBO like I belong to it.
Maybe I do. Maybe belonging is just showing up to the same sunset enough times.
The sky did that thing where it turns the color of a Rooh Afza glass, deep rose fading to dark. I finished my chai. My feet were killing me from the cobblestones.
I stayed until the skyline was just lights.
Go watch a sunset by yourself sometime. It's better than you think.
Love,