I swear it was summer on Tuesday and by Thursday the 1 train smelled like wet leaves and someone's oversharing pumpkin candle.
Fall arrived on the 1 train this week. That's the only way I can explain it. I got on at Christopher Street in a linen top I'd been living in since July, and by the time we hit 14th Street I had goosebumps and regret.
The first cold morning in NYC does something to people. Everyone stands a little closer, not out of affection but self-preservation. A man in a Yankees cap was clutching his coffee like it was the last warm thing on earth. Relatable, sir.
I wasn't ready. Emotionally, sartorially, none of it. My whole fall wardrobe is still in a suitcase under my bed in Harlem because unpacking it feels like admitting summer is over, and I am nothing if not in denial.
But here's the thing about fall arriving on the 1 train. It's honest. New York doesn't ease you into seasons the way Ahmedabad eases you into anything. Back home, weather negotiates. Here it just shows up and dares you to keep up.
I got off at 66th Street and walked past Lincoln Center where the fountain was still going, defiant, like it also didn't get the memo. A woman was already in a trench coat and boots. Icon. Prophet. I hate her a little.
By lunch I'd bought the world's ugliest gray cardigan from a bodega-adjacent shop near work because I was cold and vain is a luxury for warm people. It's fine. It smells like cardboard. I love it now.
The light changes too, in September. Softer, longer, gold in a way that makes even the grimy tiles at the 1 train stations look like they're auditioning for something.
I called my mom and told her fall arrived and she asked if I was eating enough, which is her way of saying she misses me.
Sweater weather, and I forgot how to dress myself. Classic.
Love,