“If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t be able to write my poems,” I said. “I don’t think there’s anyone as important to me as you.”

“My friendship with you is actually much deeper than any romantic love,” he replied, his face as sweet as a donkey’s. Osip was disgusted with himself for allowing his carnal love for a woman to control his life, and one of his true desires was for a firm foundation, based on friendship with a man. What he said was not a lie—it was just that he had any number of true desires.

Apparently unable to understand this, Lilya, her brow furrowed in a fit of pique, threw the rose onto the floor and started stomping it to pieces with the spike of one high-heeled shoe.

“What are you doing?” shouted Osip, picking up the rose. “Such a terrible waste of a beautiful flower!”

“There are so many,” Lilya replied with a snort, “it doesn’t matter if I throw one away. Now that you’ve paid for them, we can do whatever we please with them.”

“You just live off someone else’s money like a parasite—you don’t even write poetry.” It was a terrible thing to say, an insult to the woman before me. But wasn’t that woman actually me? The only reason I’d been able to say such dreadful things was that I’d been addressing them to me. Lilya started bawling like a lousy actress. After a moment’s hesitation, Osip apparently decided that he’d better take his wife’s side and, turning to me, shouted, “Get out. Right now.” While his lips were trembling, his eyes weren’t the least bit angry. They seemed full of pity for the poor, hungry poet who would now be left to wander the streets.

Being driven out of the bar was no cause for despair. I like the outdoors. During the day, if I’m inside for more than two hours, I want to go out. I’m sure the words in poems feel that way sometimes, too—that instead of being shut up in a book or a library or in someone’s study, they would rather be on a poster somewhere, exposing themselves to the city.

There were posters on the wall of the trolley stop.

“PHARMACISTS GIVE US MEDICINE—NOT POISON BUT A BALM FOR WOUNDS!”

What could this poster be advertising? It seemed a little off target for a pharmaceutical ad, yet too sophisticated for an antidrug campaign.

“OUT OF IMPOSSIBLE LOVE GROWS THE FEVER THAT DISSOLVES SOCIETY, GRADUALLY CHANGING IT.”

Was this an ad for a movie? Or a campaign poster for the next election?

When you take stiff, propaganda-like slogans and pick them apart, you sometimes discover their origins in places you would never have expected.

Then I had an idea—I’d print a private message on posters, which I’d put up all over the city. By putting a letter addressed to only one person on a poster, and exposing it to the public eye, inside and outside would be reversed, and the city, now as interior as a warm heart, might surround me, wrapping me in an embrace. This is what my poster would say: “2:00, 3:00, 4:00, I’VE BEEN WAITING ALL THIS TIME BUT YOU DIDN’T COME. THE CITY AND I ARE NOW ONE, BODY AND SOUL. I WILL NOT BE COMING HOME. GOODBYE, GOODBYE.”