On trains I watch faces written in the script of their errands and think: each of us is being auditioned by reality for the role of ourselves. Most days we get the part. On the days we don’t, the world is generous and miscasts us as somebody kinder or braver or more foolish than we planned

just the habitual corners, the underachieving alley that always smells faintly of fish, the bridge whose concrete belly I touch at dawn like an old relic. A city is not something you “use.” You marry it and then learn its pet names: the lamppost that supported you when drunk, the storm drain that kept your secret

I towel my hands and go sit on a bench to see what happens when nothing happens.