C.R.E.A.M
I do my absolute best to avoid returning home to Staten Island. Let’s be honest, if it is so appealing why is it free to get there by public transportation yet extremely expensive to pass through unless you have a residential EZ-Pass. I also do my best to suppress any association I have with New York’s former landfill. At most, you’ve probably heard about its escalating drug-overdose crisis, flawed system that unlawfully killed Eric Garner, and Pete Davidson’s wish that the Island just “fell into the sea”. Given the whole COVID situation and my college deciding to kick out broke students who really, really, REALLY don’t want to go home, I was left with no better option. It’s not like I don’t love my family or anything. They’re okay but they’re also Indian, which means I will be losing every right I have to go outside without answering “who, what, when, where, why, how long” before, after, and during every milli-second I spend outside our house. Prolonging going home by blaming our unreliable bus system seemed like the better option to enjoy my last few moments of freedom. As I got off the S51, I planned nothing more than to just sit on a bench at South Beach boardwalk while trying not to convince myself that dying of hypothermia would be better than going back home. I lugged my mud stained, creaky wheeled, BTS themed suitcase past the dolphin statues and made my way to the empty gazebo overlooking the ocean.
