The High Line

The gentle trickling of water against cement stones is paired with the heavy lurching of machinery against a destroyed tar road. The claw clunks underneath the unused train rail turned green space. The High Line has huge wooden lounge chairs- stacks of four planks mushed together for the park-goers to sit on. The park rules tell us to not step on the old tracks, the plants, or each other. For preservation, both nature and machine remain untouched. An oak-tree red brick square of a building is the backdrop to the twitching leaves in the wind, the three helicopters in their one-second-equilateral-triangle frame the little girls running barefoot through the layer of water streaming from the small fountain. One girl, her wilting blond curls spring as she runs, has a shirt to match her mother’s purple hair. The other leads her sister in a march. They wash their hands in the water, trying them by splaying their hands on a bench.

            Half-baked gyros squeeze through the air, masking the little blue flowers whose aromas are whisked away by the slightest breeze. Only street food and gasoline can permeate the air, spreading and invading every block of the city. Storm clouds spread across the sky and we fun back down the stairs to the normal street, away from the High Line.