Dad said, “The idea that anyone does anything alone is American Mythology.”

Midnight on the Manhattan Bridge and my feet are going numb inside a pair of rain boots that are separating from their soles after a week of walking everywhere. I pull gloves off my hands and put them in my mouth. My fingers feel foreign and unfeeling in my mouth, like cool salty stones, until they start to regain feeling. I think about the subway railings and turnstiles I’ve touched today, but it’s too cold to care.

The way the lights look from here and the delayed shutter of my camera in the cold feels like fragments of dreams I’ve been having since I was a kid. The feeling of walking but not gaining any ground. Unfamiliar familiarity. The sense you’ve been somewhere you’ve never been. I wrestle with that excited and confused homesick feeling were I wonder if anything will ever satisfy this specific, vague want and feel lost between what what I’ve known and what I’ve yet to know.

I so often think about everything I’ve left behind. A piece of something for every place I’ve lived. I think about everything I’ve done.

The idea that anyone does anything alone is American Mythology. We are only the sum of those who have helped us.