On a Friday afternoon, I was on the B train back to Brooklyn and was arriving to my last stop: Kings Highway. For the entire duration of the ride, I had been standing. The train was full of people.  There was barely any room to breathe. Everyone was anxious to get off the train and escape the unbearable heat caused by the amount of people. A man dressed in a brown leather jacket and blue jeans was talking on the phone right next to me. I overheard him complaining to the person on the other end of the phone, “If these people do not start getting off this train, I am going to lose it!” As I was the one who stood the closest to this man, I decided to move two steps back to keep my distance. I was unwilling to exit the cart, walk down the platform, and enter the distant cart. I was almost there. The train doors opened up and I thought we were still at Newkirk Plaza, but the conductor announced, “this is Kings Highway, the next stop is Sheepshead Bay, stand clear of the closing doors please.” At that moment, I ran out the train and pushed anyone who was in my way. I missed my stops countless of times before and I was not ready to miss my stop again.

Once I exited the hot train, the cold brisk air outside hit me like a slap in the face. The bright artificial lights of the train were replaced with the dark and gloomy sky.  Once I got out of the train station, I was thinking about taking the bus home. The B31 was across the street, right beside the bagel store. I decided to ditch the bus and walk home. Before I began walking, I stood by the train station entrance for a minute and watched the scene unravel before me. People pacing across the street to get on the bus, the headlights of the cars driving in front of me blinding my eyes, and a group of people congregated by the entrance complaining about the rain.  The wind had picked up and water poured down from the sky into the the sodden pavement in small drops. I zipped up my jacket, put on my hood, and began my walk from Quentin towards Avenue R. I was walking around in the residential area of my neighborhood, so all I saw were houses and apartment buildings. The rain had kept most people off the sidewalks, but there was a middle aged couple walking right ahead of me. Despite the cold rainy weather, the couple were walking at an alarmingly slow pace. Were they immune to the cold? Was the freezing rainy weather their idea of a nice afternoon stroll? I crossed the street to pass the couple and picked up my pace.

I was beginning to lose feeling in my fingers and was shaking from the cold. I wished I had wore a heavier sweater that day. I had my recurrent worry on how cold it was this fall season. How would I survive the intense cold winter? I looked up and saw the green sign by the end of the block indicating that I reached East 19. That was quick. As I continued on my walk, I noticed the masses of leaves dying off in bright colors on the wet pavement. Every step I took would make a loud crunching noise from the leaves and combined with the honking of the cars made it difficult for me to think. I walked another five blocks and finally reached the block of my house. Before I would walk down the block to my house, I decided to walk an extra block down to Bedford just for the sake of walking. I came across a house with a big flower garden in the front. I remembered biking past this house all the time when I was little on the way to Marine park and coming across different types of flowers with beautiful bright hues. I even fell down one time because I got lost in the scene of colors and forgot to look where I was walking. However, those flowers only come out during the spring season and now all I see was wet grass. The flowers always made me happy and I needed that happiness against this gloomy Friday afternoon. I walked back to East 24 street and finally made my way back home.