Rooftop

Last night, Susanna came over to McKibbin to practice music, and when things got too loud in the common area, we scaled the grimy stairwell to the roof. The roof is one of the best parts of McKibbin. You push the door out, feel the rush of warm summer air into the dark stairwell, and there you stand—six stories up, surrounded by the lights of Brooklyn and Manhattan pulsing through the heat. The Empire State building, the skyscrapers of the financial district, and the warm glow of downtown New York are background to the tower apartments and cascading sprawl of Brooklyn. Sounds of tires, horns, and distant sirens rise and fall in slow, even breaths. The city is massive, and it teems from every pore, every nook and cranny.

There a sharp hiss and upward arc of magnesium spark as someone on the roof next door lights a firework. It bursts overhead with a hollow thud and casts a red glow with its branching arms. For the first time since Greece, I am once more wrapped in the bosom of a poetic universe. It's intimidating, unmanageably large, indifferent to me even as it revolves slowly around me. I am both lost and found, dissolving and absorbing.

You stand on stage and sing out into the city, to an audience of none.