one.
in my apartment building lives a little woman who claims twenty years as a tenant. sometimes she waits outside, or in the lobby, for who i don’t know. her grandson once yelled at her for locking the bathroom door.

two.
rain stops everything. buses suddenly break down, subways follow the wrong signals, stoplights blink out of time, and the world is thrown into confusion.

snow stops everything too.

three.
in patches of what used to be rocks and pebbles and broken brick, in certain neighborhoods made of same, grow small stretches of new-grown earth. there are plants, and flowers, and buds, and sometimes vegetables. there are lawn chairs on which the french baker liked to sit and have a smoke, and benches for a young woman to cast off a cabled sweater, and sneaky weeds a volunteer horticulturalist pulled with determined and slightly angry focus.

four.
which subway color lines run west and which run east?

five.
i still miss subway tokens.

six.
on some summer weekday mornings, a car would drive by, blasting ella fitzgerald, dinah washington, miles davis, or billie holiday.

seven.
in a city where you can find anything, the only thing you can’t find is peace and quiet.