To the God Who Made Manhattan

 The tongue of the LaGuardia terminal unfurls before me as I roll my luggage, piece by piece, through a dingy, exotic, Candy Land. Culture invades my blood stream. Kaleidoscope backgrounds seal themselves like love letters in the envelopes of my nuclei. I am caught in a swell my brain cannot absorb.
 I anchor myself hoping my senses will seize the magnitude of this moment.
 I breathe deeply. Licorice. Body odor. Pimento cheese? The plastic smell of inner airplane saturating my clothes. Coffee brewing at the Starbucks to my right.
 I look up. A Jewish man to my left adjusts his kippah. The hispanic woman beside him is wearing a magenta, cheetah print skirt. She steadies herself as three small asian children scramble wildly to tame their transparent pets harnessed by invisible dog leashes.
 I fixate on their laughter and notice the jingling of coins drowning beneath the whirring drone of suitcase wheels. R&B deep cuts fizz up from the fraying ear-plates of cellular devices. Symphonies of slang coalesce, circulate, and ricochet off the terminal walls. In between compositions my breath catches at the static silence of literature being devoured. The hair on my forearms responds.
 New York City is a loud, halting train. I sprawl beneath the weight of it like a cold penny hoping it will overcome and stretch me. Beneath the flickering fluorescents of the baggage claim I observe the rotating doors churning new histories like a paddlewheel. Outside, women shoot up their delicate, deliberate arms like military commanders. Aggravated taxis fall in and out of sync in attempts to collect them. I follow suit.
 My driver's name is Idenes. We speak in broken english. His is broken by heritage. Mine is broken by deliverance. The reality God's glory and promises overcome me. I am shaken in the snow-globe of my life's miracle. My body feasts on the cool air funneling in from the cracked window. We tunnel into the city. I observe the roots beneath its roads. And here, in the dimly-lit, orange underground I have seen enough for satiation. I am caught in a moment of poetic justice. These are the moments I live for: Whirlwind epiphanies where everything suddenly makes sense and nothing hurts.
 We reach the other side of the tunnel.
 Like a mother studies the sea, sleepless Manhattan has grieved the days in long wait for me. I have starved on a cellular level for the porch light of her lit torch since the day I was born. As she beckons me to the cozy hearth that sprawls before her liberated spirit, I am a small grain of sand. I peer up at her illuminated, glass castles and concrete beanstalks that expound the heavens.
 I am an orphan come home.