There is a specific loneliness to the 6 train at 7AM. Everyone half-asleep, clutching iced coffees like life rafts, nobody making eye contact.
I got on at 68th Street this morning, wedged between a man in scrubs and a woman doing her eyeliner in a phone camera, which is the most New York thing a person can do.
And then I smelled it. Cardamom. Ginger. That particular sweetness that only comes from milk boiled too long on purpose.
The man next to me had unscrewed a battered steel thermos, the exact kind my nani used, and poured himself a small cup of chai. Not the $7 oat milk kind. The real kind. The kind that means someone at home loves you.
He caught me looking. I did the polite New York thing and pretended to study the subway map. But he just smiled and tipped the thermos toward me, an offer, no words.
I said no, of course, because I am a coward and also because you do not accept liquids from strangers on the 6 train at 7AM. But my whole chest ached.
The 6 train at 7AM is not usually a place for feelings. It is a place for surviving until Union Square. But there I was, blinking too fast, thinking about my mother's stove, the one with the burner that never quite lit right.
He got off at 33rd Street. Nodded at me like we shared something. And I suppose we did.
I got to my desk in Midtown twenty minutes later, ordered the sad office chai from the cart downstairs, and it tasted like nothing. Like water pretending.
But the morning still felt full somehow. Like the city had reached out and squeezed my hand.
Home finds you in the strangest cars.
Love,