Early Spring

Tiny pink petals dot the branches of the cherry trees lining my street, straining at their claustrophobic buds. It seems early in the season, to me, for them to be so eager, with a cold bite of lingering winter still hidden in the breeze.

But it has been unusually warm this month, the whole winter in fact, and perhaps they know something I don't. The flowers don't read the news or listen to the daily litany of doom, but I wonder if they're getting their beauty out into the world before things get worse.

A New Game

We come down the hill into the park, right at the start of the big meadow that makes up the northern part by Grand Army Plaza, to find an unruly clutch of very small children running amok around three bemused asian women who look nothing like the white scions of Brooklyn they are here to watch over.

"Haley, don't play with the stick," one of the women shouts to a blonde girl who is having a very serious discussion with her equally small male counterpart, but of course playing with the stick now sounds like a very good idea indeed, and so she picks up the stick, which is almost as long as she is tall, and takes off running with it.

And she's fast, no doubt, but she's not fast enough to outrun a nanny on a mission. The woman catches the child and plucks the offending stick from her hand, to very little objection from the little girl, who then toddles away to find another stick with which she might get someone to chase her.

Passive Aggressive/Aggressively Passive

I’m sitting on a worn wooden bench on the train platform at 57th Street when the skinny, sketchy-looking white guy with the thin facial hair rolls up on me. He makes sure to make eye contact before sitting down two seats over, and as he sits, he pulls something out of his pocket that lands with a metallic thump on the seat between us, loud enough to register even over the sound of Beck in my headphones.

There’s some sort of attempt at intimidation happening here, maybe even attempted robbery, but I’ve been here before, and I know that there’s a script here, and if he doesn’t get the response he’s looking for, the little drama he’s trying to enact won’t be able to proceed, so I don’t look at what ever he’s holding between us. The train rolls into the station, and I unhurriedly stand up, go the door as it opens and step on the subway, only now glancing back to watch sketchy white guy look up and down the platform in agitation, then dash away like he’s being chased.

Knowing Her Place

"Can I say hi?" I ask the dog's owner, but the tail wags and eye contact my new furry friend and I have going speaks of a connection far beyond some human's capacity to affirm or deny.

Before the permission has faded from the air, I am on one knee, the back of my hand toward the dog in a relaxed way, just like I was taught, and after a perfunctory sniff and a lick, I am enveloped in the wiggly charms of a bluish-gray french bulldog.

She open mouth laughs in that way that bulldogs do, her entire body an ode to joy as I rub her sides, scratch her back, wobble her jowly cheeks.

"You know that customer service has treats, right?" I say out of politeness to the owner, so she doesn't  feel left out, and she nods politely back, like the retainer for a very popular member of royalty, knowing her place while her majesty's subjects adoringly worship.

What Celebrities Do

Chloe Sevigny and a man I don't recognize stand next to me on the train platform as I wait to catch the subway home from work. The appropriate response to celebrity in NYC is to leave them alone, and since I'm exhausted and emotionally blank, it doesn't take much effort for me to just ignore them, like a proper New Yorker.

My efforts continue as we get on the same Q train together, and unlike my usual method of observing everyone and everything around me, I find myself closing my eyes in an effort not to look at them, and, lulled by the gentle rocking of the car, I promptly fall asleep.

Upon waking, I discover we're already at 14th Street and they're getting off the train to do something or other, who knows what celebrities do.

The Real Reason

"What's with the stank face?" asks the man behind me coming up the stairs from the subway.

Before I have time to process how I might answer, a woman's voice answers, "That's just my regular face."

All of us come out the subway station into a rainy evening, with tiny needles of cold stinging our faces, and the traffic shush-ing by, wet tires on wet asphalt.

Later, I hear her say, "Sometimes my knees hurt, all the sitting on the subway."

A Susuration of Wings

"Pookie, look," I say, pointing above the row of brownstones.

Across the soft blue late afternoon sky of a premature spring, a flock of pigeons flying in perfect sync bank over the street and around the spire of the church. Their wings make a quiet shhhhush as they wheel above us, making several passes like one mind spread over a myriad of bodies.

Katie and I stare in wonder for several minutes, Katie with her phone raised, getting it all on video, and I wonder if the tiny mic can capture such a subtle sound