The ride from JFK dragged, the city inching closer in hesitant strides. Rain fell in silver sheets, blurring the skyline into something half-remembered and half-forgotten.
Inside the cab, Lena pressed her fingers against the cold glass.
She shouldn’t have been here. She shouldn’t have come back.
But last week, an email arrived—unexpected, impossible to ignore. It carried the weight of a decision she had been too afraid to make.
An appointment. A chance.
Or just another dead end.
She closed her eyes. The cab hummed down the FDR, slicing through the rain. Beside them, the East River churned, its surface never still.
On impulse, she asked the driver to take a detour. A view of the Brooklyn Bridge her father once crossed.
She remembered the first time he had brought her here. She was small, unsteady, clinging to his hand as the wind roared through the bridge’s cables.
"Look, solnyshko." His voice had been warm, steady. He had pointed west. “New York. The city that gave the world hope.”
She believed him.
Now, in the hush of rain, she mouthed the word to herself. Solnyshko. Little sun. A name meant to glow. The sound dissolved into the cold air, vanishing like breath on glass.
The New York of his stories had been vast but tender, full of quiet miracles. But the city she had come to know was different—a furnace of fire and loss, relentless in the way it carved people down to their essence.
She knew this now. She had been burned by love, by betrayal. The city had taken its share of her.
Watching the rain spill down the bridge cables, she wondered how many had crossed this stretch of steel believing they could become someone new—only to be swallowed whole.
She exhaled.
The downpour quickened its rhythm against the cab’s roof. The driver muttered in Spanish about the storm, about his wife waiting for him at home. His voice was steady, unbothered, as if reciting a prayer.
Survival, after all, was stitched from moments like these—small mercies, simple acts of care. A shared dinner. A phone call saying, I’m safe.
She wondered if survival was enough.
Her father had spoken that way, too, in quiet phrases that held entire worlds. He had once told her about his first meal in this city—a bowl of soup from a nameless shop on Mott Street, so hot it burned his tongue, so rich it made him believe he might survive.
"I had nothing in my pockets," he had said. "But I had a full belly. Sometimes, that’s enough."
The cab slowed at a red light. Lena’s gaze caught on a family huddled beneath the dim shelter of a bus stop. A mother cradled a baby against her chest, her coat wrapped tight around the child, shielding it from the rain. With her free hand, she held the small fingers of an older child, who blinked up at the sky, unafraid.
For a moment, the mother seemed timeless—part of a lineage of guardians stretching across centuries, holding their children against the world’s storms.
Lena felt something tighten, then release in her chest—a familiar ache.
When had she last felt truly protected? When had she last believed in resilience like that?
The light turned green. The cab rolled forward.
She caught a glimpse of herself in the window’s reflection—worn but alive. She studied the face, staring back as though seeing someone new. The shadows of the past were there, but something else, too.
Persistence. Defiance.
The rain softened into mist, hovering above the pavement like breath.
The cab reached her stop. She paid the driver, murmuring a quiet thank you before stepping out.
The mist touched her skin, light as a benediction. She tilted her face upward, letting the city’s breath meet her own.
Behind her, the lights pulsed and flickered—the heartbeat of those who had come before her, of those yet to arrive.
Tomorrow was waiting—a decision at the end of this journey.
She thought of her father—his calloused hands, his worn but steady voice. He had believed in reinvention. In second chances.
Somewhere, another cab sped through the rain, carrying another version of her—one who never left, one who never returned, one still waiting at the edge of a dream.
"Some stories are passed down," he had once told her. "And some you must find for yourself."
The rain picked up again, drumming against the pavement, weaving through gutters, swallowing footprints before they could set.
New York did not stop for the rain.
New York did not stop for anything.
And neither did she.
She stepped forward. The city rose to meet her.
Her reflection shimmered in the glass towers—fractured, shifting.
Welcome to Michael’s Newsletter. Writer of contemporary political/social commentary, parodies, parables, satire. Michael was born and raised in New York City and has a background in theater and film. His plays have been staged in New York, London, Boston, and Los Angeles.
Michael also writes short literary fiction. Below is a link to his first collection.
Michael Arturo’s absurdist and noir-inflected tales of a city split not by geography but by memory—where every street is a version of the truth, and the real conflict isn't between characters but between the stories they choose to believe about themselves. New episodes weekly. Stories, Reviews, Analysis.
Michael Arturo’s absurdist and noir-inflected tales of a city split not by geography but by memory—where every street is a version of the truth, and the real conflict isn't between characters but between the stories they choose to believe about themselves. New episodes weekly. Stories, Reviews, Analysis.
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