Where midnight is bright as day and time never does slow down
I find myself alone for the first time ever, walking along where
nobody knows who I am and they wouldn’t really care if they did.
Because they’ve got their own stories to fabricate and skeletons
to bury beneath onionskin layers. Two in the morning with my head
stretched to the sky and I find myself falling in love with a stranger.
Central Park is a castle with horse-drawn carriages and suddenly
I’m a scarlet-cheeked princess waiting for my naked cowboy to rescue
Me so we can run away and live in a quaint Brooklyn townhouse where
the children play ghetto games. I don’t want to live the lifestyle of the rich
and famous. Leave me to myself so I can wander the splendid city streets.
The man with wrinkles covering his ebony face and his ragged, dusty clothes
too big for his slender body sneaks a glance and sly grin at me before he picks
up his golden saxophone and serenades the subway passengers, bringing
sunshine and sultry smiles to their dark faces. He’s had a painful, wretched life
and the pain of losing a son, his first baby, to a grenade in a Middle Eastern desert
where the sun burns the soldiers’ skin as they spend hour after hour, looking for weapons they’ll never find.
The look in his eyes is clear. Making others smile, in the middle of the city subway is his heart’s content.
I drop a bill into his beaten up case and move along,
but that sweet sound overwhelming the hot, ***** air I’ll never forget.
I swear I can almost touch Pluto from where I sit, at the Top of the Rock, and the stars
are an arm’s stretch away. I can see past the Manhattan skyline and into Jersey.
I’ve seen the whole world tonight. How I wish I may, how I wish I might stay. Give me the crowded
streets and boutiques for keepsakes. I’ll pack them tightly into tissue paper and each
night when I’m ready to fly away from the small town girl living in a lonely world sort
of life I’ll make a wish and fall in love all over again in a city where nobody knows my name.