A cab nearly clips your sleeve as you step off the curb too early — no one flinches. Someone’s yelling two blocks down. It might be about God. It might be about bagels. You cross the street anyway.

A man on the train is playing the violin like the world’s about to end. A baby’s crying. A woman in a power suit is crying too, but silently, and into a very expensive scarf. The guy next to you is editing a pitch deck. You’re holding a coffee that tastes like ash and ambition.

Midtown smells like roasted nuts and engine grease. Chinatown smells like fish and fireworks. Washington Square smells like weed, jazz, and somebody’s dream trying to stay alive.

A girl in platform boots is roller-skating backwards through SoHo traffic with a cigarette in one hand and a falafel in the other. No one looks twice.

You check your phone. It’s only 2:11 p.m.
You thought it was 5.

You wander into a bookstore with a crooked floor and leave with a book you won’t read and the phone number of someone you’ll never text.

Outside, a guy tries to hand you a mixtape. You take it out of guilt. He asks for $10. You hand him $2 and speed walk like your life depends on it.

Someone’s dancing in Union Square like no one’s watching. Everyone is watching. No one cares.

You eat pizza on a bench at 1 a.m. next to a man in a tuxedo and a woman in pajamas. It’s unclear who’s overdressed.

The city doesn't ask who you are. It doesn’t wait for you to catch up. It just keeps moving. Faster than you.
You fall in step anyway.

And somewhere between uptown and downtown, latte and cheap beer, tears and theater tickets —
you realize you’ve stopped trying to make sense of it.

You’re just living inside it.
And somehow, that’s enough.