Each night, as the Q train hurdles, or crawls, depending on it’s everchanging mood, over the Manhattan bridge, My gaze diverts, is redirected from a book or buried deep into my cell phone, downtown, past the countless lightbulbs of a city barely still awake. Countless skyscrapers are filled with even more lightbulbs. Skyscrapers turn into the parking lot that is the FDR. Even more lightbulbs, too many to count. Parked cars turn into the East River, where even more lightbulbs flicker, some on ferries to and from Brooklyn. Police boats rotate their red and blur floresence.

One light, in the distance burns the brightest, figuratively.

Standing in the misty distance, in a pond of pollutants, is a lady, tall and proud. Draped in green, proud, she watches over us, motherly, a city that needs us, a nation that needs us. She loves us even when we’re wrong and constantly reminds us to be better, to fight for a better collective “us”.

Every night I think to myself how beautiful, how proud, how perfect she is. My favorite French immigrant.