As she gulps down another swig of her 2nd cup of lukewarm coffee, she pays notice to the fact that this is it. This is HER time. The kid is down for his nap, and the toddler-mania had subsided for a few short hours if she’s lucky.

HER time usually arrives somewhere around 2pm most days. This is the only time she has really allotted herself, and she treasures every second of it. These moments are what she feels she lives for now. Just her and the incessant buzzing of her computer monitor. Taking another sip she closes her eyes, leaping feet-first into the streets of her memories…

It’s early in the morning as they step out on the grimy streets of another place in another time. It’s cold. They can see their breath bursting from their mouths with every word, into the depths of a blustery New York January. Their stroll makes a dreamer out of her, and for a moment she’s a New Yorker just like them. For a moment, she belongs here. She practically gallops, light-footed and sure about everything and nothing simultaneously, remaining gleefully unaware of her loathing future self.

He fills in the space beside her as they journey down the road with one heavy-headed goal in mind…..Coffee.

The street lights up like its mirrored sky, drenched in a melted blanket of once proud ice. The kinetic energy piling out of their bodies feels endless…They pour into the mouth of a modest coffee shop, overflowing at its brim with a horde of relentlessly busy and social people. Bees at home in their nest.

If they’d been back in Austin on a morning like this, she might order some kind of fancy,” girly-drink”. Maybe the ever-hated Pumpkin Spice whatever, or some other seasonal masterwork that a room full of money-toting business executives somewhere were really proud of.

“No menus….” She whispers to the side of his patient face, as they both look up to meet the eyes of a suddenly waiting barista. “Um….2 coffees to-go, room for cream?” He nervously answers, as if half-expecting a denial to his request.

Receiving and dressing their beverages, they pause for a moment before hopping back out onto the street toward their destination. She closes her eyes and takes a sip, letting out a sigh…

Upon opening them again she notices her inbox glaring back at her, as her computer screen hums out into the silence around her head. That invasive screen, towering over her, begging for her now useless company. She takes a sip and as well, takes notice, of the aching fact that she’d left a part of herself back in NY City long ago, some missing section of her heart that had been calling out for her ever since their separation.

The routine of the next few hours finds her semi-patiently awaiting the metro on a filthy curb outside of school. She drowsily looks up to see the bus, pitter-pattering down the road toward her. Her mind wanders…

Suddenly she’s in a subway tunnel watching the metallic beast pull away from the platform. As it picks up speed, a powerful gust of garbage-laden wind slaps her in the face with an invisible “whoosh!” The smell is surprisingly comforting. She notices the waiting patrons around her, clad from head to toe in winter-wear and with painted-on faces of disapproval and a general lack of regard. She wonders if her train is coming soon; the last one still “thump-thump-thumping” through her mind in next to perfect unison with her heartbeat. Or had her heart sped up to greet it?

She begins to hear a distant thumping, which causes the florescent lights above her head to flicker into perfect harmony. The pervasive thumping grows louder as a pair of headlights become visible from around the deep and cavernous corner. She looks to her feet in honor of safety, stepping into an open doorway of the patiently waiting monster…

Coming to, she suddenly realizes she’s back in her flip-flops, stepping up into the now tardy bus outside of her school in Austin. Smiling at the driver, she takes her seat. “The Vomit Bus” she used to call it. The endless pushing and pulling dance of the gas with the brakes as her head swims about, stifled by the groggy air surrounding her. Ironic that she feels more claustrophobic on the bus than she ever did on the subway. Here at home, it was the outdoors which seemed barren and lacking of a certain…flavor. The kind of flavor earned only after a city’s years of monumental happenings upon the scales of history. In New York out on the streets, it always felt like the city itself were giving her a hug. There was something tender about it, something sentimental, something personal.

Her flashbacks seemed to be happening more frequently these days, though no one around her ever seemed to notice. She craved an escape and for whatever reason, her past seemed the most comforting and realistic of options. Giving notice to her quiet desperation in that moment, she leans her head against the vibrating window. Soon, she is asleep…

They’d been to a million bars in their time but this one was something special. No need for tacky signage or flat-screen TVs. Inside was a cozy, candlelit room scattered with a couple of small tables lined in welcoming leather seating. A few bar stools as well, backed by a single sociable gentleman pouring pints for his loyal patrons. Inside the walls of this minimalist NY joint, people seemed to be communicating with each other in a sort of monotone slow-motion. All that could be heard from any of its darkness-laden corners was a low, unapologetic mumbling.

She looks at him with a glance that seemed to say she could stay here forever, as the bartender delivers them their devilishly frothy masterpieces, already beading up with perspiration in honor of the short walk from the bar. As she takes the first sip, everything at once seems to slow down and then speed up again. She closes her eyes as if to pray to some imagined Goddess for this fleeting moment in time…

Reality awakens her as she steps off the bus at her stop and into the blistering heat, sweat careening off of her neck and down her back like a river.
At home again the dishes are piling up. She HATES that…

As if on auto-pilot she finds herself 10 short minutes later, drowsily going to work on the scrubbing despite how it seems to make her feel dead inside. Reminding herself time and again that it isn’t so bad, it’s just the dishes. After all, she felt lucky these days if she didn’t find herself a melted puddle on the floor her choices.

Drifting away again she notes her drunken feet upon the pavement in the middle of the night. They’re taking a stroll after a few pints at their new favorite, modest little bar, hidden away in an alley nowhere near Time Square.

Here the dark didn’t seem so dark, the quiet not so quiet. Monstrous, mountainous ranges of buildings surround their eager bodies, as the city holds them in a way Austin never could. He grabs her hand excitedly, placing it to the asphalt with his own, snuggly resting atop it. Their energies connected and pressed against the earth, he looks into her intensely.

“Do you feel that?” He asks her.

Her heart begins to speed up as her body registers the coursing and thumping moving through them, rhythmic and calming as the ocean tides.

Ga-Goong, Ga-Goong, Ga-Goong.

Speechless she waits for him to fill in the silence.

“That’s the heartbeat of the city.” he breaths passionately toward her…

Her eyes swell up with tears as she places the final plate in the dishwasher.

It’s a never-ending cycle…. She thinks to herself in disbelief. She attempts to wipe away the tracks of her sudden burst of emotion.

“You ok?” He asks as he unexpectedly enters the room. A rustling in their bedroom signals her that HER time is over.

“The little tree-climber’s up”, she notes, wiping her hands and heading into the bedroom.

He grabs her hand as she attempts to pass him, pulling her into him like it’s the very first time. Instantly she relaxes as the kid carries on in their shared bedroom. He always DID have the power to relax her. Their embrace could have stopped time in its tracks, if only their heartbeats hadn’t been so insistent on keeping a steady count of it…