May arrived and the city exhaled.
That was the only way I could describe it — the specific collective exhale of New York coming out of winter, the shoulders of the whole borough dropping half an inch, the trees on Court Street suddenly and emphatically green, the morning air carrying the particular warmth of a season that had finally decided to commit.
I had always loved May.
This May I loved it differently — with the specific gratitude of someone who had gotten through something and arrived on the other side to find that the world was still beautiful and that this fact, which had always been theoretically true, was landing with the weight of something personally confirmed.
I was still here.
The bakery was still here.
The morning was still warm.
These were not small things.
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Th
