Bodega Run

When I lived in New York, I used to jog down to the corner store for a Diet Mountain Dew.
Not because I needed the caffeine, but because it was a ritual.

The bell over the door would ring, the fridge would hum, and the smell of warm bagels mixed with incense would hit me all at once.
It wasn’t just a store. It was a pulse.

By September, there would always be a bucket of sunflowers by the register.
Tall, bright, and unapologetic.
They leaned toward the light, even indoors, even in New York.

You would see the same faces there every day.
The barber from across the street.
The nurse from the clinic.
The old woman who bought one scratcher at a time like it was a prayer.

We would talk about nothing and everything.
The weather. The Yankees. The neighborhood.
Just being there together meant something.

The corner store was where the city exhaled.
Where strangers remembered they were neighbors.

Every September, I think of those sunflowers and how somehow, even after everything, they still found the light.

That’s how cities heal, turning strangers into neighbors.