There is a version of me that wakes up, meditates, drinks warm lemon water, and journals three pages before the sun is fully up. I have never met her. I hope she is doing well.
The real me stumbles down to the bodega on 116th and Lex at 6:50 with my hair in a claw clip and my sunglasses hiding everything a claw clip cannot fix.
My 7AM 6 train ritual starts here. Iced coffee, extra ice, the paper cup already sweating before I reach the corner. Same order every day. The guy behind the counter stopped asking months ago.
Biscuit, the bodega cat, sits on the stack of newspapers nobody buys and judges me quietly. I respect this. My nani used to look at me the exact same way when I left the house without eating.
Then I go underground. The 6 train at 7AM is a specific kind of quiet. Not empty, never empty, but hushed. Everyone still half-dreaming, holding their phones like little glowing prayers.
I have a spot. Second car from the back, by the door, where I can lean and watch Manhattan tunnel past. Somewhere between 96th and 86th I usually text my mom good morning, which is her nighttime, and she sends back a single folded-hands emoji and a photo of dinner I am not there to eat.
This is the thing nobody tells you about moving abroad. The homesickness does not live in the big moments. It lives in a bodega iced coffee at 7AM when you suddenly want your mother's chai so badly your chest hurts.
But then the train lurches, someone's oversized tote bag hits my knee, and I am back. Just a girl on the 6, going to work, part of the machinery of this ridiculous beautiful city.
By 33rd Street the coffee is gone and I feel almost like a person. My 7AM 6 train ritual has done its job. It always does.
Biscuit, if you are reading this, I know you saw nothing.
Love,