Land of vibrant, red autumns,
I can already see your leaves littering my bedroom floor.
The sunlight is bright, but the air is cold,
And snow waits in patches for overeager children.

Home of theater, home of music, home of promise,
You stand before me.
Your clamor and chaos and cheer eats away at my fingertips.
The poets sit around with their Candides, their Scarlet Letters, their Great Expectations,
Their great novels not yet published,
Drinking their trendy frappes and lattes and tea.

Fashionable people wear their scarves, ride their mopeds.
Musical hearts wait to be unleashed on the world.
Dancing feet wait impatiently in lines that wrap three times around the building.
Agents chatter on their cell phones, producers tap their feet impatiently,
Actors strive.

I want to be there, in the midst of it all.
There is a play unwritten in my head,
The players are playing, the lines are being rehearsed, the blocking is reviewed.
There is a novel unwritten under my skin.
There are words unwritten in my ear.
The pencil waits anxiously, the eraser beside, the paper slightly wrinkled.

In your land awaits the great schools of old,
Ones I have only heard of, ones I haven't been accepted to.
Great traditions flourish in the New York winter.
It is I, lowly I, against trust fund kids and brilliant minds,
But I want to be there.

It is where it all happens, where it all could begin for me.
My feet are impatient on this ground, among these mountains.
I will return one day, but I want to be there.

There, where the summers are brilliant and the winters frosty,
Where great minds think and work everyday, latent.
There, where it has began for many,
There, where I might leave my mark,
And my name may be known.

But I am right here, right now.
I am seventeen, and I am an unknown.
The novel is yet unwritten, and the play has not been conceived.
I drink cheap tea from the grocery store,
And I drive my father's car to school.
I am one of many students, not the most lauded,
And I do not stand out.

I am not budding star, you would not know it from looking at me.
The potential is there, but not fully recognized.
It needs to be nurtured and encouraged and fed.

New York, New York.