There was a particular cadence of chatter that rattled through the streets that began with a first heel that clicked on the pavement as a first coattail drifted behind a lady walking with intention. By the late afternoon, her former pace will have slowed after a long day of work and a group of friends are just beginning their day at the venue with the most drinking and the worst music. At the museum down the block, a fundraiser started about fifteen minutes ago, glasses of champagne clinked while more guests arrived after having straightened their ties in the car mirror only twenty minutes prior. In a New York minute, a Jewish girl and a Catholic man married while a black girl and a black mother smiled at the white woman they met via glance in the bathroom, and the businesswoman with the dancing coattail came home to a husband who spent his day taking care of their newborn baby. And before this miracle was born, when this very same pavement held up white people rioting during the chaos and mayhem of the Reconstruction Era and eyes were glazed over by blinding ignorance, this heterogeneous population may have stunned those that this city consisted of; one hundred years later, but what progress has been made?
Every respectable person within ten thousand blocks of midtown knows that we lived in an ugly world. A world where your school picture would be judged more for being black than if you excelled at science; that is the disgusting reality of the inside walls of a closed mind.
At least I have lived in a world where I can kiss a black person without judgment and the boy that called me a chink was told to be nice and I was apologized to. During the late hours of a mesmerizing sunset when the city of dreams began to contribute greatly to the myth of light pollution, a gay couple is harassed for holding hands. On social media, a gay man was a faggot and a woman that wore a suit was a dyke.
By some miracle, American individuals have grown. Pockets of beautiful diversity have flourished and are thriving in our nation’s largest cities but as I bask in the glory of a diverse world I find myself disappointed nonetheless. I gape at the world spinning out of control as fast as Mercury’s orbit wishing that the Romans may send a worldwide message.
People push through one another as if they have a more important destination than the person to their left not caring about anything other than their own journey. People splash puddles on the feet of the girl with the heels from Prada but the true devil is the more envious soul. Some people silently beg these ill-mannered individuals to be nicer in the middle of the night; the ceiling always reflecting on the material world more than the people living in it and something about that fact results in a tear or two on the pillow cases they sleep on.
Suddenly the curtain is not keeping out the shadows but bringing in the sunshine. Coattails begin flying like doves released at a wedding and arguments drown out among the laughter of mixed couples seemingly skipping from one street corner to the next; the working woman’s coat tail flicks up before resting and her heels click on the crosswalk and I realize why this city never sleeps. The sun has made our world brighter.
This idea was good but not entirely translated well, if this were not an imitation essay maybe I would have portrayed my idea better. I think I strayed from the writing and this made it messy. However, I like a lot of the imagery in this piece. Imitation essays are always interesting because I find the picture I paint to be more detailed in them. If I had to redo this I would focus more on the concept but hold onto a few of the imagery lines that I really enjoy.