It could be from anyone, I told myself, pulling a beer out of the fridge and making toast for dinner. It could be to anyone. Marnie. A past tenant. The postal equivalent of a wrong number.

The smell of Thai food lingered and made my stomach rumble, but the toast was hard to chew so I threw most of it out and finished my beer, waiting for my bones to soften and my brain to slow down. I thought about Donna and that steady, rhythmic chugging of the train, so familiar and yet so strange. I thought about my best friend Lina and me, years ago, slumped low in those hard, uncomfortable fake-leather seats, not talking, just staring out the window at the blur of graffiti-covered fences that lined the tracks. We’d wasted hours that way, probably whole days, pretending we were going somewhere but not going anywhere.

We were teenagers then. Lina was still my best friend, maybe, but I never caught the train anymore, and I hadn’t spoken to her in weeks—longer. Months. Too long. She’d been calling me. Texting. A lot. Wanting to talk, to catch up. Leaving voicemails she had to know I wouldn’t listen to. I’d been meaning to get back to her, to find time, to do the things I knew I had to do, but I hadn’t.

I didn’t know how long it had been, and now there was a blue and gold postcard on my kitchen bench, watching me, waiting.

When I finally picked it up, after finishing another beer, going downstairs to check the locks on the door, checking the ashtrays and the stove and sniffing for smoke, I expected it to burn, to shock, to be heavy and hard and big and breathe fire, but it was just a rectangle of cardboard, slightly bent and too easy to tuck into mypocket, light enough that I could almost forget it was there, could still walk across the flat and into my room without collapsing under its weight.

I opened my window and looked down at the rusty awning beneath, full of so much bird poo and diesel dust and cigarette ash I didn’t know how it was still hanging. I wasn’t sure it would hold me if I fell onto it, but I leaned out anyway, feeling the cold air on my face.

I smoked a cigarette. Two. Listened.