I fell in love with New York in the winter. It was the only thing that made sense.

It was freshman year. Everyone had gone home early. It was just me left, alone in the city, and so I made sure to do all the things I’d always seen people do in movies. I went to the Rockefeller tree. I looked in a bunch of shop windows. I sat in churches I didn’t belong to. I stood outside Tiffany’s for a solid twenty minutes, daring myself to go inside, but I never did. I moved in slow motion through the holiday markets. I sat by the Hudson in the freezing wind. Tried to write a poem, but ended up just writing “I’m cold” over and over and over until I finally trudged home.

I am a senior now, and I can still only love New York in the winter. Everyone has left again, or they’re holed up out of sight in the library, so I’m doing all the things I did as a freshman, one last time before I say goodbye to this city. Rockefeller, windows, churches, markets, standing outside Tiffany’s. I live by the East River now, so I’ve traded Jersey for the Pepsi Cola sign, and it’s still just as freezing when I leave my apartment in the morning.

I love the lights, and the colors, and the glitter. I love the music spilling out of every hotel lobby. I love the way little kids smile when they see old men in Santa hats. I love the way diners in the evening look like they’re giant candles, windows fogged up, orange glow flickering inside the glass, shadows dancing. There is no snow this year, but I still love how I can smell it, hanging in the sky, promising it’ll come soon.

I collect books like I’m stockpiling for the next Ice Age. I wear the same sweater every day. I buy tickets to the ballet. I walk up and down escalators in department stores, just watching the hustle and bustle of people with more money than I buying designer shoes for their nieces and nephews. I think about The Godfather. I think about You’ve Got Mail, and Sleepless in Seattle, and maybe finally shortening my name to Meg and cutting my hair short so I can run a bookstore and meet my own Tom Hanks. F-O-X.

I love this city when it feels like it’s frozen in time. This is the New York I fell in love with in all those black and white films I watched when I was little. This is the New York I thought I was getting when I moved here, only to find it was catcalls and litter and traffic and sweat. But then Santa rides through on his Macy’s-sponsored sleigh and it’s like he’s ushering us back in time, back to simplicity and cheer and capitalism that doesn’t smart the wrong way.

It is only in the winter where I feel like I’m most running out of time. It is only in the winter that I think about maybe staying. It is a feeling I hold onto, knowing it will leave me as the frost melts, because I am grateful to feel it while I can. Before new cities and new winters call me further down the road, and New York fades into a memory, a film I’ll return to on late nights by the fireside, a New York that will disappear as I do, into the clouds, heavy with snow.

xx,
M.