From behind the windshield

From the passenger seat, the city feels like a film unspooling just for me. Buildings rise like patient giants, their windows catching the late sun and scattering it in shards of gold. Traffic lights blink in soft rhythm—red, amber, green—a quiet choreography guiding the restless flow of cars.

Storefronts drift past like fleeting thoughts. A café door swings open, releasing a breath of roasted coffee into the evening air. Neon signs begin to hum awake, painting the sidewalks in electric blues and tender pinks. Crosswalks stitch the streets together, white threads binding one hurried life to another.

I watch it all through glass slightly smudged by fingerprints and time, the world softened at the edges. My husband’s hands turn the wheel, and with each curve of the road, the skyline shifts—towers leaning in, then falling away, like waves made of steel and light.

From here, I am both part of it and apart from it. The city does not know my name, yet it tells me its stories in reflections—faces in bus windows, laughter caught at a red light, music thudding faintly from a passing car. We move forward, street by street.