It happened Thursday. The first cold morning in Astoria.
I knew before I opened my eyes because the air in the apartment had that specific edge, and because somewhere in the building, a radiator woke up for the first time since spring and started its opera. Clank. Hiss. Clank clank.
My landlord treats heat like a rumor he refuses to confirm, so the radiator coming on in mid-September is basically a religious event. I lay there listening to it clank and I swear it sounded like the temple bells back home, that same insistent metal music that means something is beginning.
September in New York doesn't ease out. It slams a door. One week you're sweating on the N train platform at Broadway, the next you're rummaging for a jacket you swore you'd donated.
I walked down 31st Street under the elevated tracks to my usual spot for coffee, and everyone had changed overnight. Sweaters. Boots. That collective New York decision to Be Autumn Now, made silently by eight million people at once.
The first cold morning in Astoria always makes me tender. I've been in this apartment two winters now. I know its sounds. I know which floorboard betrays me at 6AM, which window whistles, which radiator sings.
That's a strange kind of belonging, isn't it. Not the city knowing you. Your rooms knowing you.
I made chai on the stove — properly, boiling it down, none of that teabag business — and stood at the window watching the 7 train slide by above the street like it does every seven minutes, reliable as a heartbeat.
Back home, this time of year meant Navratri gearing up, garba every night, the whole city vibrating. Here it means radiators and pumpkin everything.
Different song. Still music.
Welcome back, cold. I saved you a seat.
Love,