Winter had come and settled down, resting itself in the low hanging air of the
streets, filling voids in the cracks of the concrete and bricks so summer couldn’t
hide and preserve its strength. The cold was miserable but the winds were worse,
cutting through the New York streets in their singular direction, not even the walls
wanted to move and block the gusts for its people, instead deciding to let them
suffer alone. Only the subway, hidden beneath the earth, held onto its human
warmth. It was the only artery still pumping in hibernation, flowing blood through its
tunnels to nourish itself to continue living until summer came again.

  The subway cars rode full of silence, the passengers’ mouths too frozen to
move, leaving the air to sit in their lungs, dying as they waited for something to
happen. People huddle together, not letting the light shine between their bodies, so
their warmth would multiple and grow stronger. The fat that clung to their skin,
insulating their own insides from their neighbors to keep their individual form that
they were born with distinct from the communal heat, slowly faded with time; by the
time spring came, it would be so thin no one could recognize themselves anymore.

  Towards one of the ends, a man sat passively on the subway car’s bench,
staring directly ahead of himself but without intent or desire. He was ordinary to the
extreme: he was a normal height; he wore normal shoes and clothes; he styled his
hair in a normal way; and he acted normally. There were no sharp edges to jut out
and cut his neighbor and make them bleed, but there was nothing to carve his
initials into the plastic walls and mark himself as his own. He was there, and when
death eventually catches him, he would no longer be there, the man-made world
continuing to move without him or his invisible marks.

  His thoughts blindly followed his gaze, each one of them sticking to the dark
pillars that moved past, becoming known and understood the moment they
disappeared. He continued thinking, hoping that eventually everything that there was
to think would be thought up and he would think of some thought that had already
been stuck to a pillar and catch a glimpse of it again, to understand it better. But
nothing ever showed and he kept thinking new things.

  “See something interesting?”

  The man turned and looked at a woman. She was short, though not
aggressively so, and her dusty gold hair fell down her shoulders and onto her back.
She wore a bright orange coat that had dulled from wear and age and a knitted cap
to hide underneath. She was anything but ordinary, her darkened, dull blue eyes
carried her heat for her; an excitement for living and love that could not stay in the
body and be quiet. In her hands was a book in a language the man had never heard

of.

  “I’m sorry?” he responded, confused. He had grown used to the dead silence.

  “You’re staring like you’ve seen something important. I don’t want to miss
anything!”

  “No, nothing important, just people.”

  “People are important.” The woman flipped through her book, letting her thumb
run against the pages, feeling it softly. “Where are you going?”

  “Anywhere, nowhere in particular.”

  The man sat in silence, appreciating its return, and closed his eyes for a moment to
let it settle back into his lungs.

  “Can I ask you a favor?”

  The man opened his eyes again and looked at the woman, her face was full and
warm, pushed forwards to try and give some of it to the man through the little space
that was between them.

  “Sure.”

  “It’s my last day in the city, and I don’t want to spend it alone. Will you spend it
with me?”

  The man was surprised by the woman’s confidence and fearless demeanor,
but part of it appealed to him. It was something he had never had, to let his body
and soul move without thoughts or hesitation, free from society to live as they
wished.

  “OK.”

  They sat in silence, watching the shadows in the window slow and fade away
into station lights, the blackness hiding in the mortar of blue and green glazed
mosaic walls and pillars until quickly apparating with speed and covering the window
fully. Back and forth, back and forth, the man sat there enjoying the cycle until the
woman got up and left, taking the man’s hand in hers and leading him out through
subway doors.

  They came out to a busy street where faceless people, who looked much like
the man, moved through them to wherever they were going. Time passed and they
arrived at a small cafe and ordered themselves coffee and some food. It was
cramped and the air was dense, but the whiteness of the walls gave the space
enough room to breathe and be palatable for people to live in. Old Rihanna songs
from the mid 2000’s played from the barista’s cheap, portable speaker on the
counter; it looked as though it had existed as long as the song and had never been
cleaned, only existing for its single purpose.

  The man sat down while the woman waited by the counter for their breakfast,
choosing a table hidden by some plants where the mood of the room was darkest
and easiest to slip under. Sitting at the table opposite of his was a group of women,
not too young nor too old, chatting and laughing, enjoying their lives and the
happiness innate to friendship. They each had flowers by their knees, propped up
against their chair legs and wrapped in plastic, on occasion drawing their eyes from
whatever superficial discussion that was floating between them just for a moment,

so they could steal a second of physical appreciation.

  He wasn’t sure what it was about those women, but he hated how they laughed
and smiled at each other. Was it the redness of their warm cheeks? The flowers
below them? No, it was probably him and his own distaste for himself that made him
hate them and how shrill their voices sounded, but this all only made him hate
himself and the women more.

  The woman placed the man’s coffee and bagel down on the table and sat with
her own food. He did not hate her, though he knew part of him wanted to. He liked
the brightness of her eyes that melted into her hair and looked deep into him with
hope; he liked her big smile that couldn’t hide a lie if it wanted to, only capable of
laughing and living and learning; he liked that he knew she learned through touching,
moving from one spot to the next, not understanding until she felt it fully and deeply
and loved it enough to not forget it.

  They ate for a moment before the man asked what the woman had been
reading.

  “It's about possession and language. I’ve been thinking, and the more I’ve been
thinking the more I’ve come to realize that we don’t own anything. We have nothing!
So why do we speak like we do?”

  “I don’t think owning words is owning anything. You own a toothbrush and soap,
but those aren’t unique things, more like personal belongings. Sayings are created
through…” the man spoke but he did not mean anything he said or cared about it, he
only wanted to hear her voice and her laugh, like she was one of the women at the
other table he hated, so he could hate them less.

  By the storefront window, a black cat jumped up onto a bookshelf and paced
back and forth, wasting its time until the day was over and it could go back to bed.
The man watched it move, but could not take his eyes off the woman before him,
letting the light of the world enter into him fully and drown what emptiness was
hidden inside. When they finished eating, the woman took a small thing of bread she
had bought with her meal and brought a nibble to the cat.

  She led him to a park, a small one, that she said was her favorite. It was tucked
between a square of small streets with a tiny pond where ducks swam in its center.
They sat down on a bench and watched them slip through the water passively and
the man could not help but notice a dim sadness hovering over him in the sky.

  “Where are you going?” he asked her, wanting to hear her voice again.

  “Nowhere, I’m here in the park with you.”

  “You said it was your last day.”

  “Oh, I am going south where it's warmer and doesn’t rain so much.”

  “You strike me as a woman who likes the rain,” he said without thinking.

  The woman looked at him with her eyes, not sure where to focus them other
than somewhere on his body. In her act of looking, the man could see that there was
something pulling her away from him, some invisible string tied to her throat. The
woman stood abruptly, startling the ducks into flying momentarily before they

remembered they were tired and settled back down.

  “Why would I like the rain?!”

  The man stood to match her, not understanding anything, and said, “You look
like a woman who enjoys her moments; all of them,” though he did not know what it
meant. The woman pushed her arms into his and held herself against his body.
  Carefully, he drew his hands around her and held her tightly, wanting to fill up as
much of the space between them as he could so he could comfort her. In her arms,
the man understood the woman fully; in his arms the woman understood the man
fully. She placed her head in the crook of his neck, where the wind couldn’t blow and
kill their warmth, and held herself there.

  The man looked down on the woman’s blonde hair, still surprised by how
different it was from the blandness of the world around him. The heat from her body
entered his and made him not want to let go. He had forgotten that the world, which
had gone cold, was full of people in it, and that each one was full of life and thoughts
and warmth. This woman, who had trapped him and stuck him onto her permanently,
was human. She was thinking thoughts and in them were hints of dreams and loves
that were her own, whether she liked it or not; beneath her closed eyelids she was
thinking something profound and meaningless.

  “You’re cold,” she said.

  “It’s the air.”

  “No, it's you.”

  “Well, you can warm me up then!”

  The woman smiled and pulled away. There was only so much warmth she could
give him before she started going cold too, and the man had gotten used to his own
coldness and he really had no desire to ruin the woman. It was nice though, to be
reminded what warmth felt like, and it gave him hope that it would come again some
day.

  They left the park and began walking through the streets of the city; the
woman said it would get his stagnant blood moving like hers and that was why he
was so cold. The world moved around them, their feet rooted in place, still holding
onto each other so they wouldn’t fall. They watched people push their way through
the crowd, announcing their presence to the world just in case it had forgotten them
and left them behind. But to the man, they all were like him, bland and average and
altogether forgettable, and he could not wrap his head around why they thought
differently about themselves.

  They came to a small farmers market along an avenue or other, tucked into its
own folds and creases, existing in spite of bureaucratic attempts to kill it until it was
dead. She approached a white tent and began talking to an old man behind a
counter, who reached under the table and drew out a handful of wooden coins and
counted them out before placing them in the woman’s hand.

  Returning to the young man, she began to lead him through the market and
browse through its groceries. There were tents of meats and cheeses and honeys,
distinct reminders of the countryside and human touch, spread across the street.
The two strangers walked hand-in-hand, stopping to look at each stand, most of the
time not even interested in the product, but just to slow time down some more so
their day could be as long as it needed to, and they could feel each other a bit
longer. The woman had an eternal smile on her face, one that the man kept seeing
and couldn't help but notice there was a thought behind it that refused to come out
past her lips. He wanted to take his fingers and pry her mouth open, to hear her
words, but he knew he couldn't; words don't move unless they feel like it.

  They came to a large tent filled with fruits and vegetables. The woman only
picked up an onion and some peppers and told the man that this was all she
needed. After paying, leaving the vendor with all her wooden coins, she took the man
by the hand and continued their walk through the drabby streets.

  Time quickened up a bit to make up for what it had lost in the tents. The sky
had grown duller and its weight became—

  *Thump*

  The man rolled over onto his back, his hands red and scraped from the
concrete. He looked at his feet and saw a lip in the concrete where moisture had
frozen and warmed repeatedly, shaping the world around it, and made him trip.

  “Oh my God! Are you ok?” The woman knelt down and grabbed his arm and
shoulder and began lifting him up, but he didn’t move. He didn’t want to; he just
wanted to lay there on the stone for a while. Knowing it might be a while and she was
already half fallen, the woman fell down fully and laid down next to him, pulling the
bag of vegetables close to her body and cinching it shut even tighter.

  The working world kept moving, stepping over their arms and legs as though
they were tree roots that were exposed eventually due to weather and age. The
sounds of engines, passing flocks of pigeons, sickly coughs and sniffs of those
unable to stop their movement, and the steady thumps of steps filled the air and
harmonized with one another. It was a familiar song, neither the man nor the woman
were uncomfortable with its presence or existence, but they couldn’t hear it at that
moment. They were stuck in their own silence.

  “This is my favorite place in the city,” the woman said, her eyes locked looking
upwards at the cold, gray sky, trying to get a peek between the clouds where the
sadness was hiding so she could make it happy.

  “It is? It doesn’t look like much to me,” responded the man. The street was
normal like him: it had normal gray and smooth concrete sidewalks and roads; normal
sized and looking buildings made of brick and even smoother and grayer concrete;
normal looking shop fronts, littered with neon signs and advertisements, with normal
looking customers inside; and normal looking cars that moved people with intent.

  “That’s why I like it. It's normal.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The city has an energy to it,” she said, moving her gaze onto the man, laying
her cheek against the normal cold sidewalk, poking it with a pebble that then got
stuck to her skin, “one that pushes itself onto you whether you like it or not. It wants
to be remembered as distinct and unique. Each building and park and street juts its
neck out a bit farther than the others so it can see you coming and wave and get
your attention, only the other buildings and parks and streets jut their necks out in
response. It all cascades until everything is the same, faceless in their uniqueness.
No one and nothing here wants to be ignored or sit in its own silence, instead making
noise just to make noise. It's so blah. But here it's normal, nothing stands out or tries
to make itself known.”

  “Well what about R*****,” the man pointed to the store in front of which he had
decided to fall and lay down, “even from here I can see that it is loud and obnoxious
and juts its neck out.”

  “I don’t know, I’ve never been here before. That’s why I like it.”

  They sat in their own silence again for a moment, still unaware of the world’s
greater song of movement, and just enjoyed each other’s company. Without thinking,
the man took the woman’s hand in his and tried to feel her through her wool gloves.
He couldn’t, but he could think of nothing else, his body sunk further into the
sidewalk, unable to feel disgust for nature or mankind, only focused on her presence.
She would leave him, he knew that, but he couldn’t fathom what that kind of world
would look like; perhaps it would move faster and he wouldn’t be able to recognize
the redness beneath the fuzz of her cheeks or the depth of her eyes anymore. He
wouldn’t be able to feel love anymore. It irked him that he used that word, something
he was sure he still didn’t know what it meant, but he believed it. A lifetime and the
love that comes stapled to it could fit in a day if it needed to.

  “Is that why you’re moving? To go somewhere normal?”

  “No, but I wish it was.” The man did not push her further, as he felt her mouth,
and with it her words, close.

  “Get up! You’re blocking my store!” A large man had come outside of R*****
and began to yell at them. The man looked at him with his eyes without moving his
body to peer into the owner’s throat to see if there was anything left that he had to
say. There was, and the large man didn’t even try to hide it as it sat proudly on his
Adam’s apple and even pushed its way forward into his lower mouth. Not wanting
any trouble, the man stood up, however reluctantly, using his knuckles against the
pavement as leverage. The woman followed, refusing any help, though he did wipe
the pebble from her face.

  By the time they reached the woman’s apartment, the sun had died and the
world had gone dark. He couldn’t help but think during the few moments of silence
of the day, constructed from intimate and common words. He wondered how anyone
could walk by the woman without thinking of her, without making her their muse for
the day. He wondered how anyone could get close to her, if there was even anyone

worthy of it, and feel her kindness. He wondered whether when she moved, would
the distance make him loathe her, like those women in the coffee shop, filling his
memory with ugliness and indifference. He wondered if it was he who was ugly and
indifferent.

  He wondered as they came to her door and she grabbed the handle to open it. “I think it's time for me to go. I’m tired and worn and haven’t slept in a while,” said the
man, lying out of fear.

  “Stop,” she answered. “Soon I am leaving so let's leave the thinking for
tomorrow.” She opened the door and pointed him towards her couch and told him to
lie down and rest, but he wasn’t tired and just followed her. Her room was large but
unlike the rooms of other young women, she hadn’t made it sad. Wherever the man
thought to look for shadows of sadness, she had once covered it up with odd-ball
knitted pieces, old and worn blankets, and trinkets she had found laying on the
ground. She had choked out sadness through things, but not just mindless things,
things that she could hold and remember fondly. But now they were packed into
boxes, concentrated and hidden away so they could continue to function in her next
life, and the sadness had snuck its way back inside. Perhaps that was why she asked
him to be with her that day, to be a thing on her wall.

  The woman called the man to the kitchen and put the food in a pan. The
popping of oil pushed through the air, filling their ears with fluff. The man couldn’t
hear anything, or see or smell or taste; all that tethered him to the world was the
woman pressing her body against his as she cooked. She had even begun to dance.

  With each sway of her body and movement of her hips, the man’s sadness
sunk itself deeper into his body to hide. He realized she was almost entirely different
from him: her heart beat twice as fast; her feet moved twice as quickly; her love grew
twice as large; and her eyes were twice as beautiful. They couldn’t walk side by side
for long, her forward movement would be too fast and he would get left behind,
watching her find someone with feet as fast as hers. Only this moment, this single
day where their feet touched the same place, could they touch and feel love. And
the man was fine with that, as one day could be so long if it needed to be.

  They ate and went to the couch to remember each other’s bodies. Nothing could
take away from that moment, not even his failure, which pricked his throat like a
needle. The woman took a book from a box then laid naked on the carpeted floor. It
was a copy of X, something the man would never have ever considered reading. He
went to put his own clothes on, but the woman stopped him and told him to sit for
just a moment in his nakedness. He watched as her feet danced in the air while she
read.

  The man eventually dressed himself and sat back down while the woman
continued to read. He knew it was over, as did she, but neither wanted to move and
desync their steps. The woman eventually joined him on the couch and laid in his
arms, tired of her book, and talked about her life and dreams, the ones hidden
behind her eyes or inside her boxes. Both of their eyes were closed, listening to the

song of each other’s voice and body, letting it improvise one last movement.

  By the time night came fully, it had begun to rain. It was harsh and icy and beat
against the window until they couldn’t hear each other anymore. The man stood up
and put his coat on, it looked so bland next to the orangeness of the woman’s coat.
The woman had gotten dressed and walked him to the door.

  “I will see you again, I promise,” she said, taking his hands in hers.

  “No you won’t.”

  “Of course I will!”

  “You will be so far ahead of me. But I don’t mind, I’m used to losing people.”

  “Don’t say that, it makes me sad.”

  “It’s ok. I am glad I met you.” He leaned in and kissed her before opening the
door.

  “What will you do now?” she asked, thinking outwardly.

  “I am not sure…I’ll just keep on walking, I guess,” he said with uncertainty, the only
thing he could think of at that moment was her.

  “Well at least take the subway instead of walking. Otherwise you’ll be too slow
and never see me again, and there is no reason to lose people and live with sadness
in this world.” The man smiled, hugged her again, feeling her existence and thoughts
for the last time, and walked down the apartment stairs. The cold, wet rain drenched
the man on his way home, but he didn’t mind; he had stolen just a little bit of warmth
from the woman.

____________

 

  It was still cold, and winter hadn’t decided to move on quite yet. It had been
cold for so long that people had forgotten how to make their own worlds. They just
looked forward and kept moving. But with what eyes? Their faces were blank and only
black sockets were left of what was once lively and colored. With what feet? Their
legs were thin and spindly and had stubs on the ends. A nameless man was in a park,
the one with the pond with the ducks. He sat on a bench looking out on the city
street, passively watching cars pass by with lifeless bodies, moving from one point to
another through smooth space in search of intent to give themselves life again. He
only thought of a woman, keeping that little warmth inside of him alive, otherwise it
would fade into smoldering ashes and become forgotten. In his hands was a
sandwich he had bought, he could taste the tomato in the bottom of his throat. The
winter wind still bit at his face and she was gone.