It happened Tuesday. I walked up to the 6 train at 77th and Lexington and for the first time since May, I wasn't sweating through my shirt before 9am.
The air had that clean, sharp edge to it. The kind that makes you stand a little taller.
I pulled out my thrifted brown jacket — the one I found at a stoop sale in Astoria for six dollars and swore I'd never wear because it made me look like a substitute geography teacher. I wore it. I loved it.
The 6 train at 77th in fall is a specific kind of theatre. Everyone suddenly has a coffee cup and a coat and a purpose. In summer we're all just melting strangers. In fall we're characters.
A man across from me was reading an actual paperback, corner folded down like a promise. A girl had a scarf on already, which felt ambitious, but who am I to judge ambition.
Back home in Ahmedabad we don't really have fall. We have hot, less hot, and the two weeks in December where everyone acts like it's the arctic and pulls out monkey caps. So this season still feels borrowed to me. Like I'm trying on a coat that belongs to someone taller.
But the 6 train at 77th doesn't care that I'm new to autumn. It just carries me downtown anyway, past Hunter, past the Bloomingdale's crowd, into the churn of the day.
I got off at 51st and the wind actually cut through the brown jacket a little. Six dollars, apparently, has its limits.
Still. I'll take it. I'll take every crisp, borrowed, geography-teacher morning this city hands me.
Fall, you took your time. But you showed up.
Love,