New York City, you are incessant
and I love you for it.

I cannot fall asleep side by side with silence.

I cannot fall asleep beside a dark window,
spotted intermittently with points of light.

I need the purple clouds, morning-adjacent,
the Poughkeepsie equivalent
of dawn, a siren down the block,
then more sirens, then a car alarm.

New York City, you are a symphony
and you amaze me.

The distorted projection of my grandmother’s windowpane
on the ceiling of her one bedroom apartment

alternates between light and dark – either headlights,
accompanied by the lull of an engine,
or silence,

or close enough.