and Whistles

Late night in midtown, before the Tree arrives, after the tourists have returned to their berths and the avenue is unusually still, turn a corner and enter doors you've only seen from without. There's a familiarity in wires, in giant spotlights strung from soundproof ceilings, in buzzes of creative technology; there's a matted air around deadlined frenzy, and it comforts you. He turns a page and you read it a hundred times as fast as you can, trying to commit it to memory. Here are my sleeves, everything is on them. You zip up your jacket but make a note to try other routes. Soon, soon.

On the train home, that reliable F train carting me up and down this city at all hours and never asking any questions, a sudden sadness gripped me and I couldn't shake it while I lay shivering in bed. The heat came on, at last, the first violent sputtering of the season; it hissed in my eardrums as I fell asleep but could not drown out the cold fear in my chest. Anything but sunshine is darkness. Anything but perfection can just as well go to curbside collection.

You read your note, consider the map. Wonder if soon is now.