I am here, aren’t I? Still. I’m the one who has to live with me, still. Always. It gets lonely sometimes, even with love in my life. Shae, forgive me. I have something to tell you: I made a new friend. You’d like her, honestly. She’s fiery. But believe me, she’ll never replace you. She couldn’t. We’re all on the same current, I promise.

•  •  •

A stranger is shouting at me. I blink, stirred from my daze, and he shouts again. He’s ordering me to smile. I hadn’t even realized I’d been crying, but I don’t stop crying, and I don’t smile.

My Saltine neighbor tells the stranger to fuck off, and the stranger fucks off, so I give the Saltine man a tiny nod. He returns my greeting. Then he breaks his last cracker in half, feeds it to a rat-with-wings nesting on his chest, and resumes his repose.

With the backs of my freckled, sun-spotted hands, I drag tears across my wet cheeks. A cluster of angry drivers lay on their horns all at once, drawing my attention to the jarring chaos of Tenth Avenue. It’s just an ordinary avenue. Just a few million ordinary people navigating the drama of their lives below a manmade garden of earthly delights. I lick tears from my lips, stand from this bench, hoist my bag high on my shoulder and head toward the stairs, toward the chaos of ordinary lives. One worn-leather step at a time.

Back on the street—brick and pavement, trash and spices, no trace of the bamboo or prairie and peace overhead—I buy a bar of chocolate-covered marzipan at the nearest bodega. My train leaves at ten to six, which ought to allow just enough time for me to return to myself. What a strange day this has been. So many strange days in my not-yet-long life.

The strangest of late runs through my head again, as it has all month, on a loop. It was the evening Robert told me I looked pretty in setting sunlight. Everything was half an inch out of place that night. He’d had a migraine. I’ve never known Robert to get migraines in his life, but he asked me to pick up a medicine I couldn’t find, and when I came home empty-handed, he was sitting in the dark all alone. He wasn’t himself. Somber. Still. I chalked it up to the migraine. I used to get them with my periods when I was a teenager, and I remember hiding from light and the whole nine, too. I felt sorry for him.

But the way he looked at me, the way he spoke—so clear-eyed, so sharp, cool and contained, not pained—gave me chills. The way he said, “Isn’t that strange?” when I told him the pharmacist couldn’t find his prescription. The way he said his day had been “enlightening.”