I caught the 6 train at 6AM this morning and I want to tell you what nobody tells you: the early train is the only quiet New York gives you for free.
No elbows. No tinny TikTok audio leaking from someone's phone. Just me, a man asleep with his head against the pole, and the rattle of the 6 train pulling out of 116th Street like it also wished it were still in bed.
There was a fitting in the Flatiron at 7:30 and I'd rather die than be late, so here I was. Mascara half-done in the reflection of the dark window between stations.
The thing about the 6 train at 6AM is that the light changes when you come up at 28th Street. Everything is that soft blue-grey, the color of the dupatta my Nani used to wear, and the city looks almost shy. Almost gentle. It doesn't last.
I stopped at a tiny cart on Lexington and got an everything bagel, toasted, scallion cream cheese, and the man handed it to me wrapped in that thin paper that immediately goes translucent with butter. Two seventy-five. He called me beta. He did not, obviously, but it felt like that.
I ate it standing on the corner because I genuinely could not wait. I had not earned this bagel. I'd done nothing yet. But that's the secret of the 6 train at 6AM — you get the reward before the work, like the universe trusts you for once.
By the time I walked into the studio the city was loud again. Horns on Fifth. A guy unloading garment racks, yelling at no one. The quiet was already gone, folded up and put away until tomorrow's early train.
But I had butter on my fingers and the whole day still ahead of me.
Some mornings the city hands you a bagel and asks for nothing back. Take it.
Love,