Everything about New York is hard

Everything about New York is hard
Taking the uptown train to get to the downtown train
Which is running on the F line because fuck you
Walking a mile in the end anyway
Standing feverish, enduring asinine talk about bitches, bars, Columbia classes.
How do they endure it, wearing stockings and scraping the poop off their high heeled shoes, sitting down and tuning out, tuning out.
Tuning out with such aplomb.

Fraternity hazing
A communal, persistent, continually impending trauma
Dopamine bath of shared identity
Smitten with their captor, embracing the rusty bars of a shared prison cell with shared bathroom
Maintaining appearance, guards up.

There's no city like it, say the masochists sitting on the platform waiting for a B train that will never come, not a shred of annoyance in their otherwise impatient faces.
It's easy to forget or never know that there is another way
Or to gasp, breath lost for the hundredth time at the same view of sunrise over the East River when you finally take that taxi.
It will never leave me
The bleary gospel of red brick and concrete
Fiery eyes that burn bright through strife
I was not long for you, o city