My first Valentine’s Day in New York was a haze of hunger and hair tangled in someone else’s fingers, a drag race of delusion draining me like cold sweat stuck on skin. My second run dashed through Washington Heights, where strangers’ laughter brushed the ceiling in a rush of rum and rain. There was a push and a shove and then it was all over. My third has yet to pass but I know I will leave a half-made bed in Brooklyn and eat lunch with an old friend until the afternoon light trickles out and I take the uptown train home, skipping over stops like a stuttered syllable. My roommate and I will sneak chicken wine under our coats and toast to our twenties and half-baked romance over pink sheets. Snow pearl-strung on the windowsill, I think of freshman year and how I am grateful that some things change, while others stay exactly the same. In a world alone, I remain grateful for my roommate and cheap wine and the whispers wandering through 114th street. 

-EK