Priya moved back to Mumbai on Tuesday.
She was my first real friend in this city. We met at a sample sale in the Garment District two years ago, both reaching for the same absurd chartreuse blazer, and instead of a fight we got a friendship. That's the origin story. Very us.
We did our last dinner in DUMBO because she wanted to see the bridge one more time. We sat on the cobblestones near the carousel, the Manhattan Bridge framing the skyline the way it does in every photo you've ever seen and one you'll now take yourself, and we ate momos from a place that has no business being that good.
Here's what nobody prepares you for about NYC friendships: they're beautiful and they're borrowed. People come here full of intention and leave for love, for family, for cheaper rent, for a version of themselves they can only be somewhere else. The city is a train station wearing a costume of permanence.
Priya's leaving because her mother's unwell and because Mumbai, finally, was calling louder than New York. I get it. I understood it completely and I still cried into a momo, which is a texture nightmare, do not recommend.
We talked about everything. The blazer, which she's taking with her. The night the R train stranded us in Bay Ridge. The way she taught me that ghar is a feeling you can carry, not a place you're stuck to. She's the one who told me, homesick my first winter, "You're allowed to have two homes and miss both. That's not being greedy. That's just being lucky twice."
The DUMBO carousel spun behind us, all lit up, and we watched it like it meant something. Maybe it did.
Goodbye dinners are a cruel genre. You want to say everything and you end up saying nothing and ordering more food to delay the check.
She texted from the airport: "same moon, remember." Everyone I love keeps saying that to me lately. Maybe that's the whole secret.
The people you meet here are on their way to somewhere. Love them fast and love them fully.
Love,