There is a version of the 6 train that only exists before 7:15am. Empty enough that you can sit. Quiet enough that you can think. It is not the sweaty, elbow-to-armpit 6 train of my nightmares. It is soft. It is almost polite.
I catch it at 77th Street. Before that I stop at the bodega on Lexington where the man behind the counter has started making my iced chai without asking. It is not real chai. My Ba would faint. It is basically sweet milk pretending. But it is cold and it is mine and I hold it like a tiny trophy.
The 6 train at 7AM is where I do my best nothing. I don't scroll. I don't rehearse arguments I'll never have. I just watch the stops go by — 68th, 59th, 51st — and let the city load slowly, like an old computer waking up.
Somewhere around Grand Central the train fills. The spell breaks. Suits, AirPods, a man eating a full bacon egg and cheese with alarming commitment. And I feel almost protective of the quiet I had a minute ago.
Back home mornings were loud in a warm way. The pressure cooker whistling. My mother yelling about something and nothing. Here mornings are loud in a stranger way. But the 6 train at 7AM gives me this small pocket of home-quiet, and I've learned to guard it.
Waking up early in this city is a love language you give only to yourself.
Love,