Birthday Cake

Downtown Manhattan (Pixabay)

"I turned back and watched New York City recede behind us, as if the whole island were floating away in the summer wind, this island like a birthday cake for an ancient giant with a mammoth appetite, a cake on fire with its blazing windows and broken promises, and kept ones, too, everyone's fifteen minutes and everyone's could-have-been, everyone's one-that-got-away and no one, lost children and grown-ups trying to get lost in its neck-cricking height, its rushing streets, its tunnel-deep icy-officed smoke of a thousand cigarettes clouding your eyes. All the light floating away from us."
Tanuja Desai Hidier, Born Confused